1. A method of distributing parallel algorithms of a parallel application among compute nodes of an operational group in a parallel computer, the method comprising: running, separately on each compute node in the operational group, a thermal diagnostic program; monitoring, during the running of the thermal diagnostic program, a temperature in each compute node; establishing a hardware profile, wherein the hardware profile includes the temperature of each compute node in the operational group; establishing a hardware independent application profile, the hardware independent application profile describing thermal characteristics of each parallel algorithm of the parallel application, wherein entries in the hardware independent application profile are normalized with respect to the temperatures, from the hardware profile, of the compute nodes on which the parallel algorithms execute; and mapping, in dependence upon the hardware profile and the hardware independent application profile, each parallel algorithm of the parallel application to a compute node in the operational group.