James Wayne Hunt ’73

Wayne was born Aug. 5, 1952, to Augustus and Bernyce Hunt in Trenton, N.J. He departed this life March 21, 2021. 

Wayne was a  lover of jazz, funk, R&B, and photography, and his quiet and quick-witted personality charmed everyone he met. His love of music was shared with many friends as well as his daughters. At Princeton Wayne graduated cum laude in electrical engineering. He earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University. 

While at Princeton, Wayne was part of the group of students who started the Society of Black Scientists and Engineers, which is still in operation to this day. In 1976 he refined and submitted the Hunt-Szymanski algorithm. Variations of this algorithm are still in use in incremental version control systems, wiki engines, and molecular phylogenetics research software.

Wayne became a department head at A&T Bell Labs, a unit director at UNIX System Laboratories, and the management systems product realization vice president of Lucent Technologies. He remained with Lucent for a decade before retiring in 2004.

Wayne is survived by his two daughters, Brittany Morgan Hunt and Bentley Monique Hunt. An open mic memorial service was held April 3, 2021, in Trenton, N.J. The class offers its condolences to Wayne’s family and friends.