For a more high level description, see Ford-Fulkerson algorithm.

Maximum flow problems can be solved efficiently with the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm.

Another application of widest paths arises in the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm for the maximum flow problem.

Successive shortest path and capacity scaling: dual methods, which can be viewed as the generalizations of the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm.

The algorithm is identical to the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm, except that the search order when finding the augmenting path is defined.

The max-flow min-cut theorem (Ford-Fulkerson algorithm)

They independently showed that in the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm, if each augmenting path is the shortest one, the length of the augmenting paths is non-decreasing.

A variation of the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm with guaranteed termination and a runtime independent of the maximum flow value is the Edmonds-Karp algorithm, which runs in time.

In 1955, Lester R. Ford, Jr. and Delbert R. Fulkerson created the first known algorithm, the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm.

Ford's paper with D. R. Fulkerson on the maximum flow problem and the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm for solving it, published as a technical report in 1954 and in a journal in 1956, established the max-flow min-cut theorem.