Thank you, Mr. Emeagwali

I’d like to take a moment to recognize a gentleman by the name of Philip Emeagwali.

Mr. Emeagwali was born in 1954 to a poor Nigerian family. He was a gifted mathematician, but had to drop out of school when his parents became refugees during a war.

Nevertheless, young Philip pushed on with his gift, first in England and then in the USA, and ultimately devised a method for making large numbers of interconnected microprocessors talk to each other.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because you’re using it right now. While no single person can truly claim to have invented the Internet, it could not have come about were it not for his contribution, which ushered in arguably the greatest human innovation in the lifetimes of most of the people reading this.

We all have a refugee – a dark-skinned refugee at that – to thank for the way we live our lives today. Had we closed our doors to his family, the job I do today might not yet exist, the means by which I met my wife might not yet exist.

Mr. Philip Emeagwali, I salute you. Thank you for your gifts to the world.