Fern Hunt

Fern Yvette Hunt (born January 14, 1948) is an African American mathematician known for her work in applied mathematics and mathematical biology. She currently works as a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where she conducts research on the ergodic theory of dynamical systems.

Early life and education Hunt was born in New York City on January 14, 1948, to Daphne Lindsay and Thomas Edward Hunt. Her sister, Erica Hunt, is a published poet and author. Hunt's grandparents immigrated to the United States from Jamaica before World War I. Hunt attended the Bronx High School of Science, and it was during her time in high school that her primary focus shifted from science to mathematics. Her PhD thesis (1978) Genetic and Spatial Variation in some Selection-Migration Models was advised by Frank Hoppensteadt. She has been a member of the Bryn Mawr College board of trustees since 1992 and the Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee for the United States Department of Energy since 1994. In 2005, the Association for Women in Mathematics awarded her the Ella Z. Falconer award, where she delivered the lecture "Techniques for Visualizing Frequency Patterns in DNA." The AWM has included her in the 2020 class of AWM Fellows for "her exceptional commitment to outreach and mentoring; for her sustained efforts to make the AWM organization more inclusive; for her service to higher education and government; and for inspiring those underrepresented in mathematics with her work in ergodic theory, probability, and computation".

Hunt's work earned her recognition by Mathematically Gifted & Black as a Black History Month 2017 Honoree.

Published Works HUNT, F. Y. (2005). A Mathematician at NIST Today. In B. A. CASE & A. M. LEGGETT (Eds.), Complexities: Women in Mathematics (pp. 314–327). Princeton University Press.