For the fifteen years, onward of June 20, 1974, I conducted my supercomputer research alone.

I did so alone because I was ridiculed, mocked, and rejected by all-white research teams that were exclusively programming only sequential and vector processing supercomputers. As a black African-born supercomputer scientist in the United States, I felt like I was in exile wherever I am.

I’m in exile in the United States.

I was in exile in Africa.

I was in exile

in the then uncharted territory

of the massively parallel processing supercomputer.

A multidisciplinary

supercomputer research team

could comprise of one thousand

scientists and engineers.

Each member

of that supercomputer research team

was at the frontier of knowledge

of physics.

Or at the frontier of knowledge

of mathematics.

Or at the frontier of knowledge

of computer science.

To discover parallel processing

required both theory and experiments

and required a polymath,

rather than a mathematician.

To invent

the massively parallel processing supercomputer

required a polymath

that was simultaneously at home

at the frontiers of physics, mathematics,

and computer science.

It took me sixteen years

of advanced training,

onward of March 25, 1974,

in Oregon (United States)

as well as weekly attendances

at 500 research seminars

of the 1980s in the District of Columbia

and Maryland (United States),

to become that triple threat

and that polymath

that is at home

at the frontiers of knowledge

in physics, mathematics,

and computer science.

Most importantly,

I was the only research scientist

that gave massively parallel processing research lectures

to audiences of research

computational physicists

at the United States national laboratories.

I gave research lectures

to research mathematicians

at the international congress

of mathematicians.

I gave research lectures

to research computer scientists

of the two premier computer societies

in the world, namely,

The Computer Society of the IEEE

and the Association for

Computing Machinery.

In the late 1970s and early ‘80s,

I was rejected

because white research scientists

dismissed me

before they heard me

give my research lectures

on how I invented

the massively parallel processing

supercomputer.

The audio and video recordings

of my lectures on the new supercomputer

that I invented

are posted at emeagwali dot com.

To work cohesively

as a supercomputer research team

demands that each team member

follow the team leader.

The supercomputer research teams

of the 1970s and ‘80s

were coerced to group think

and were technologically brainwashed

to group think only in the direction of

conventional vector processing supercomputing.

The leading proponents

of vector processing supercomputers

were the leading opponents

of parallel processing supercomputers.

18.1.4 Sometimes, The Impossible is Possible

In 1989,

there were 25,000 users

of vector processing supercomputers.

I was the only fulltime programmer

of the handful of

massively parallel processing supercomputers

of the 1980s.

Gene Amdahl and Seymour Cray,

the two leading opponents

of the parallel processing supercomputer,

argued that it will forever

remain impossible

to parallel process through as many as

eight processors or computer cores.

In the 1940s through ‘60s,

the group thinkers

in the field of supercomputing

focused only on the

sequential processing supercomputer

technology.

In the 1970s and ‘80s,

the group thinkers in supercomputing focused only on the

vector processing supercomputer technology.

In those two decades,

I was forced to work as a lone wolf

supercomputer scientist

that was not a member

of a 400-person research team.