James W. Hunt

"James Wayne Hunt Obituary". Hughes Funeral Home. March 21, 2021.

This ingenuity led him to become a department head at A&T Bell Labs, a unit director at UNIX System Laboratories, and finally, the Management Systems Product Realization Vice President of Lucent Technologies. He remained with Lucent for a decade before retiring in 2004.

In 1982, he also published a journal on how to use Programming Languages in IEEE (institution of electrical and electronical engineering) computers.

In 1976, he refined and submitted the Hunt-Szymanski algorithm, .mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit;word-wrap:break-word}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"\"""\"""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .citation:target{background-color:rgba(0,127,255,0.133)}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg")right 0.1em center/12px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:none;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#3a3;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right{padding-right:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflink{font-weight:inherit}Hunt, James W.; Szymanski, Thomas G. (1977). "A fast algorithm for computing longest common subsequences". Communications of the ACM. 20 (5): 350–353. doi:10.1145/359581.359603. S2CID 3226080., a variant that was originally proposed by Harold S. Stone. It is a solution to the longest common subsequence problem. It was one of the first non-heuristic algorithms used in data comparison. To this day, variations of this algorithm are found in incremental version control systems, wiki engines, and molecular phylogenetics research software.

James Wayne Hunt (August 5, 1952 – March 21, 2021) was an American computer scientist and inventor. He invented the Hunt–Szymanski algorithm and Hunt–McIlroy algorithm algorithms. It was one of the first non-heuristic algorithms used in diff. To this day, variations of this algorithm are found in incremental version control systems, wiki engines, and molecular phylogenetics research software. The research accompanying the final version of Unix diff, written by Douglas McIlroy, was published in the 1976 paper "An Algorithm for Differential File Comparison", co-written with James W. Hunt, who developed an initial prototype of diff.

Wayne was the first born of two to the union of Augustus and Bernyce Hunt on August 5, 1952 in Trenton, NJ. He grew up as a major lover of jazz, funk, and R&B music as well as photography, his quiet and quick witted personality charmed most everyone he met. He graduated cum laude with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University, and then went on to receive both his M.S. and PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He was part of the original group of students in the school's chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).