AFRICA 10, A supercomputer genius

New African, Sept. 2004 LONDON - Philip Emeagwali was voted the 35th greatest African of all time in a survey for New African magazine, it was announced on August 26, 2004. Emeagwali also ranked as the greatest African scientist ever.

The science and technology categories were topped by Emeagwali and Imhotep, respectively. Emeagwali is the scientist that helped give birth to the supercomputer, the technology that spawned the Internet. Imhotep was the multi-genius that designed Egypt's first pyramid.
The list was topped by South Africa's Nelson Mandela and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah.
Emeagwali (third from bottom right) ranked 35th and the greatest African scientist ever (from pages 16, 18, 20, 22).

The London-based magazine said responses flooded in after the survey was launched last December to nominate the top 100 most influential Africans or people of African descent.
Heroes of independence movements in Africa and African-American figures in the United States figure prominently on the list.

Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first post-colonial prime minister, ranks sixth, followed by US civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

Pele, the legendary Brazilian soccer star, comes in 17th, followed by Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley, numbering among those called "Diasporans" by New African.
Radical civil rights leader Malcolm X, at ninth, is a rank above United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, from Ghana, who comes just ahead of US boxer Muhammad Ali.
Few women made the cut. The highest-ranked female, at 12th, is Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of the South African president. Others include the dynamic duo of tennis, American sisters Venus and Serena Williams (together ranked 73rd), and ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti at number 81.

The magazine noted that most of the top 100 are from Africa's post-colonial period.
"Have people forgotten Africa's history? Must this worry us, as a people?" it asked.
The list appears in the August-September issue of New African, which has a circulation of roughly 30, 000 across dozens of countries. It said this is the first such survey it has carried out in a decade. -- South African Press Association & Agence France-Presse, Sapa-AFP (with contributions from other sources)

The science and technology categories of "100 Greatest Africans" were topped by Emeagwali (below) and Imhotep (above), respectively. Imhotep was deified nearly 5,000 years ago and worshipped by early Christians as one with Christ. Imhotep has been called the "father of medicine," the world's first recorded scientist, and patron of ancient scribes. James Henry Breasted wrote that Imhotep "was the patron spirit of the later scribes, to whom they regularly poured out a libation from the water-jug of their writing outfit before beginning their work."