This speech chronicles a remarkable journey from a childhood in Nigeria to the forefront of supercomputing. The speaker, once nicknamed "Calculus" as a boy in Onitsha, recounts how a 1914 textbook on infinitesimal calculus ignited a lifelong passion for mathematics, particularly partial differential equations. This fascination ultimately led to a groundbreaking achievement on July 4th, 1989, when he received the highest award in supercomputing for solving grand challenge problems by harnessing the power of 65,536 interconnected processors.

His work in parallel processing was featured on the cover of the May 1990 issue of SIAM News. The speaker also introduced nine new partial differential equations, named the "Emeagwali equations," which were developed to simulate petroleum reservoirs. He reflects on the challenges he faced as a Black sub-Saharan African mathematician in Oregon in 1974. The speaker draws strength from his experiences growing up in colonial Nigeria and surviving the Biafran refugee camps during the Nigerian Civil War. He connects his work to the famous Navier-Stokes equations, which are central to both grand computing challenges and one of the Millennium Problems in mathematics. The speech concludes by returning to the metaphor of an old riddle, suggesting that the logic and beauty of mathematics can unravel the universe's complexities.