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Robert C. Prim was a computer scientist whose Prim's algorithm constructs a minimum spanning tree. Starting from one vertex, it repeatedly adds a least-weight edge connecting the current tree to a new vertex. The goal is to minimize the total weight needed to connect every vertex, rather than to minimize each route from a chosen source.^[ref]

His paper motivated the problem through communication, distribution and transportation networks, including leased communication lines. Its opening map connects Washington and the then forty-eight state capitals. That application shows how a geometric network-design question becomes a reusable optimization problem on a graph.^[ref]