Dr. Philip Emeagwali was born on August 23, 1954, in Akure, Nigeria. He earned his first diploma from the University of London (through self-study) in 1973 and subsequently earned a doctorial degree from the University of Michigan.

In 1975, Dr. Emeagwali read a 1922 science fiction article on how to use 64,000 mathematicians to forecast the weather for the whole Earth. Inspired by that article, he worked out a theoretical scheme for using 64,000 far-flung processors that will be evenly distributed around the Earth, to forecast the weather. He called it a HyperBall international network of computers. Today, an international network of computers is called the Internet.

Dr. Emeagwali's formula used 65,000 separate computer processors to perform 3.1 billion calculations per second in 1989. This formula led to computer scientists comprehending the capabilities of supercomputers and the practical applications of creating a system that allowed multiple computers to communicate. For this contribution, the book 'History of the Internet' profiled Dr. Emeagwali as an Internet pioneer, CNN calling him "A Father of the Internet."

Dr. Emeagwali has received more than 100 prizes, awards and honors. These include the Computer Scientist of the Year Award of the National Technical Association (1993), Distinguished Scientist Award of the World Bank (1998), profiled in the book Making It in America as one of "400 models of eminent Americans," and in Who's Who in 20th Century America. In a televised speech, as president, Bill Clinton described Emeagwali as "one of the great minds of the Information Age."