Alfred Ephraim Hunt (1855-1899) was a 19th-century American metallurgist and industrialist best known for founding the company that would eventually become Alcoa, the world's largest producer and distributor of aluminum.

He was working there in 1888 when his acquaintance Romaine C. Cole brought a young man three years out of Oberlin College to meet him.

Though aluminum is the most common metallic element in the Earth's crust at about 8%, it is very rare in its free form.

The process for aluminum separation discovered by Hall, called the Hall-Héroult process because of its near-simultaneous discovery by Paul Héroult, provided a cheap and easy way to extract aluminum as a pure metal.

Hunt realized that if he could create a market for this metal and control the patent on the process for extracting it from common materials that he'd have a substantial business on his hands.

Hunt would serve as the fledgling company's first president from 1888 to 1899[3] and identify early markets for the metal ranging from materials for electric cables to cookware.

[4] Carnegie Mellon University's Hunt Library was donated by Alfred's son Roy.