THE BIOGRAPHY OF ALEXANDERANIMALU

He was born on August 28, 1938, the fifth child to Mr. Michael Animalu Nwakudu and Mrs. Josephine Nkenwa in Okuzu, Oba of Idemili South L.G.A. of Anambra State of Nigeria, and attended St. Paul’s CMS Church School, Isu-Oba (1943–44); St. Thomas’s CMS Church School, Okuzu (1944–45) , CMS Central School, Isu-Oba (1945–51), Dennis Memorial Grammar School (1952–56) for secondary education and (1957–58) for Higher School Certificate. He then attended University College, Ibadan (1959–1962) where he was taught by Professor Chike Obi and Professor James Ezeilo. Professor Animalu graduated with B.Sc. (Maths) and won the Faculty of Science Prize for the best performance for two consecutive years. He also won the Crowe's Prize on Abstract Algebra and Theory of Numbers and the University College Postgraduate Scholarship.
It was this College Scholarship that saw him through the University of Cambridge in the UK between October, 1962 and December, 1965 when he obtained the M.A. (Cantab) and Ph.D. (Maths) in Theoretical Solid State Physics. The high quality of his Ph.D. thesis was attested to, when the main results were published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1965 and included in W.A. Harrison's book entitled "Pseudopotentials in the Theory of Metals".^[3] The book contained the model potential tables which were in such high demand by researchers in the field of metal physics and semiconductor electronics that the Ph.D. thesis work as published in Philosophical Magazine became by 1983, a citation classic, having been cited more than 729 times between 1965 and 2001.^[4] He is the only African in Physics to have earned such a record of citations, his paper being the best among the best twelve cited papers from the University of Cambridge in fifty years (1930–1980). It is of interest to note that four of these twelve most cited works from Cambridge have subsequently won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Between January, 1966 and December, 1967, Prof. Animalu was Research Associate in Division of Applied Physics, Stanford University and between January, 1968 and August, 1968, he was a visiting scientist at the Department of Physics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In September, 1968, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri, Rolla. His research work was in solid state and elementary particle physics. In 1970, he moved to Drexel University in Pennsylvania, as Associate Professor of Physics. A major breakthrough in his career came in April 1972 when he was appointed a research physicist, at the Lincoln Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) working under H.J. Zeiger and J.B. Goodenough on research projects related to development of computer core memory and primarily on the development of the transition-metal model potential, thus extending his Ph.D. thesis area to now include all elements of the periodic table. It was within this period that he completed his principal book, Intermediate Quantum Theory of Crystalline Solids published by Prentice-Hall in 1977. It became a world-wide classic with an Indian Edition published by Prentice-Hall of India in 1978. It was also translated into Russian by the Russian Academy of Science in 1981, reprinted in US in 1994 and is currently on the world-wide web.
After a period of teaching and research in the UK and US between 1962–1976, he returned to Nigeria in 1976. Within a year of coming back, he began to make contributions to the development of Nigeria.
He was invited to become a Professor of Physics in 1976 in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nigeria, Nsukka by his former lecturer and the then Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Emeritus James Ezeilo. The former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, presented him with the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) ^[5] award for Basic Science in 2000. He rose in academic positions becoming Head of Department of Physics, UNN in 1981 and 1994 and Dean, Faculty of the Physical Sciences, UNN. His proposal to the Federal Government of Nigeria led to the establishment of a Centre for Energy Research and Development in the UNN in 1980. He became the first substantive Chairman of its Governing Board in 1989. The idea for a National Mathematical Center in Nigeria was hatched by Professor Emeritus Ezeilo and Professor Emeritus Animalu. He was the 1990 Ahiajoku lecturer, the highest Igbo academic privilege given to such scholars as Professor Chinua Achebe and Professor Onwumechili. His theory of high-temperature superconductivity based on the novelty of the pairing mechanism for electrons was published in Hadronic Journal in 1991 and led to his subsequent nominations for Nobel Prize in Physics. He has trained many Nigerians in the field of theoretical physics and solar energy and established two youth organizations, Society for Promotion of Indigenous Inventions and Creativity (SPIIC) and Century-21 Club.
He is interested in using geometry to investigate African culture and system of thought, thus with Willy Umezinwa, he coauthored From African Symbols to Physics. He has worked with one of his biographers, Jeff Unaegbu, on ICT as the lost but renascent and evolved language of African system of thought in the 21st century and the dialogue between western and African worldviews. He is currently using geometric thought processes to investigate African multilingualism and Igbo artifacts, origins and system of thought, especially as seen as ancestral to Adam in the works of Professor Catherine Obianuju Acholonu. Professor Animalu has more than 80 scholarly articles to his credit.

NIGERIAN BORN MATHEMATICIAN DIASPORA.



Okikiolu comes from a mathematical family, her father is a mathematician and inventor and her mother is a high school mathematics teacher. Her parents met when her father left Nigeria to study mathematics at the same college in England where her mother was studying physics. Her father, the Nigerian George Okikiolu, has written more mathematics papers than any other Black mathematician. She is married to mathematican Hans Lindblad.
Okikiolu earned her B.A. in Mathematics from Cambridge University in England before coming to the United States in 1987 to attend graduate school mathematics at UCLA (the University of California, Los Angeles). There, she worked with two mentors, Sun-Yung (Alice) Chang and John Garnett, and was able to solve a problem concerning asymptotics of determinants of Toeplitz operators on the sphere and a conjecture of Peter Jones, characterizing subsets of rectifiable curves in Euclidean n-space. She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA in 1991, and she has been exhibiting first rate mathematical abilties.
After her doctorate, Kate went, in 1993, to Princeton University where she was an Instructor and an Assistant Professor until 1995. From 1995 until 1997 she was a visiting Assistant Professor at MIT. She became a resident status in the U.S. at this time. Since 1997, she has been on the faculty in the Mathematics Department of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), first as an Assistant Professor. Also in 1996, Dr. Okikiolu spoke as part of the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration for Association of Women in Mathematics (AWM). In 2002, she gave the Claytor-Woodard lecture at the NAM meeitng st the Joint Mathematics Meetings.
In June 1997, Kate Okikiolu was the first Black to win the most prestigous award for young mathematics researchers i the United States, a Sloan Research Fellowship. In 1997, UCSD promoted her to Associate Professor. The $70,000 Sloan Fellowship was not her only award of 1997. Here is a press release of the White House October 23, 1997, repeated the next day by the National Science Foundation.

Sixty young researchers have been chosen to receive the second annual Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. The presidential honor is the highest bestowed by the U.S. Government on 60 outstanding young scientists, mathematicians, and engineers who are in the early stages of their independent research careers. The awards, which include a five-year grant of up to $500,000, are made by nine governmental agencies. Twenty of the awards are made through the National Science Foundation. ... The awards were established by President Clinton in February, 1996, in order to meet the Administration's goals of producing the finest scientists and engineers for the 21st century while maintaining U.S. leadership across the frontiers of scientific research.
Dr. Okikiolu's PECASE video project will now feature inner city kids teaching mathematics. The first video is called ``Negative Money'' and teaches children to calculate with negative numbers by using the example of debt. It is really a sort of math cabaret, and features kids from Enterprise School in Compton and will be completed next year.
Dr. Okikiolu has been researching the "spectral determinant" of a drum, which is essentially the number obtained by multiplying all the individual sound pitches made from a drum note. This number helps describe the shape of the drum. Although this area is largely understood in two-dimensional drums, Okikiolu is investigating the more challenging spectral determinant problem for three-dimensional drums. In a separate project, Okikiolu also studies linear distortions of drum notes and other types of signals. Research in this area may have implications for problems in quantum physics. For her work aiding inner-city children, Okikiolu plans to make a series of videos depicting model teaching lessons that emphasize real-world perspectives. Designing model dwellings and bridges, constructing useful articles such as clothing and shelves, mending bicycles and painting pictures are "hands-on" activities that Okikiolu believes can acquaint children with mathematical concepts and help them grasp the significance of numbers and measurements.