James W. Hunt

James Wayne Hunt ( - ) 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.
Early life and education.
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). 
Career.
In 1976, he refined and submitted the Hunt-Szymanski algorithm, , 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.
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.