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Claude Shannon

Polymath who founded information theory and digital circuit design.

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Claude Shannon

via Wikipedia: Claude Shannon · see source

Claude Shannon was an American mathematician and engineer who founded information theory and helped create digital circuit design.[1][2] His 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" introduced the bit and established the fundamental limits of communication.[3][4] Shannon also built Theseus, an early learning machine that could navigate a maze by trial and error.[5][6]

Life and work

At MIT, his 1937 master's thesis showed that electrical switches could implement Boolean algebra, laying the foundation for digital circuits.[7][8][6] During World War II, Shannon worked on cryptography and fire-control systems at Bell Labs.[9][10][11] In 1948 he published "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," which created the field of information theory.[3][11] Shannon joined the MIT faculty in 1956 and taught there until 1978.[12]

He co-organized the 1956 Dartmouth workshop, considered the founding event of artificial intelligence.[13] Shannon died in 2001 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.[14][11] Claude Elwood Shannon was born on April 30, 1916, in a hospital in Petoskey, and his family lived in Gaylord, Michigan, where he attended public school and worked as a messenger for Western Union.[15][16][11] Shannon was awarded a PhD in mathematics from MIT in 1940, the same year he also received an SM in electrical engineering from that institution.[7][11]

What the cited sources add

An MIT News obituary states that Shannon was a distant relative of Thomas Edison.[11] The same source notes that all communication lines today are measured in bits per second, a concept Shannon made precise with "channel capacity."[11] A 2019 MIT News article reports that Shannon built the Theseus maze at home with his wife Betty, who was also a mathematician at Bell Labs.[6] Tse further notes that Shannon's theory now underlies all modern communication systems, including 5G standards.[17]

The MIT News obituary records that Shannon received honorary degrees from Yale, Michigan, Princeton, and Oxford, among others.[11]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Atmar, "A Profoundly Repeated Pattern", Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 2001, p. 208–211; Tse, "How Claude Shannon Invented the Future", December 22, 2020; Roberts, "The Forgotten Father of the Information Age", April 30, 2016 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Slater, "Portraits in Silicon", MIT Press, 1989, p. 37–38; James, "Claude Elwood Shannon, 30 April 1916 – 24 February 2001", Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 2009, p. 257–265; Horgan, "Claude Shannon: Tinkerer, Prankster, and Father of Information Theory", April 27, 2016; Brooks, "How Claude Shannon Helped Kick-start Machine Learning", January 25, 2022; Golomb, "Claude Elwood Shannon (1916–2001)", Notices of the American Mathematical Society, January 2002 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Claude E. Shannon", IEEE Information Theory Society; ; "Claude Shannon: Reluctant Father of the Digital Age", July 1, 2001; Goodman, "Claude Shannon: The Juggling Poet Who Gave Us the Information Age", Daily Beast, 2017-07-30; Goodman, "Genius in Training", Alumni Association of the University of Michigan, 2018; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Chang, "Principles of Scientific Methods", CRC Press, 2014, p. 217; Jha, "Without Claude Shannon's information theory there would have been no internet", The Guardian, April 30, 2016; Tse, "How Claude Shannon Invented the Future", December 22, 2020; Keats, "Virtual Words: Language from the Edge of Science and Technology", Oxford University Press, November 11, 2010, p. 36 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Bell Labs Advances Intelligent Networks"; Klein, "Mighty mouse", MIT News, 2019, p. 6–7; "Bell Labs Advances Intelligent Networks" (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Klein, "Mighty mouse", MIT News, 2019, p. 6–7. facts only, no text reused. technologyreview.com
  7. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Poundstone, "Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street", Hill & Wang, 2005, p. 20; Chow, "Claude Shannon: The Father of Information Theory", History of Data Science, June 5, 2021; Poundstone, "Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street", Hill & Wang, 2005, p. 20; Vignes, "Silicon, From Sand to Chips, 1: Microelectronic Components", ISTE / John Wiley and Sons, 2023, p. xv; Rioul, "Information Theory: Poincaré Se en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Shannon, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits", Trans. AIEE, 1938, p. 713–723; Shannon, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits", Trans. AIEE, 1938, p. 713–723 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Gertner, "The idea factory: Bell Labs and the great age of American innovation", Penguin Books, 2013, p. 118 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Computing: A Historical and Technical Perspective", CRC Press, 2014, p. 183 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  11. "MIT Professor Claude Shannon dies; was founder of digital communications", MIT News office, February 27, 2001. facts only, no text reused. web.mit.edu
  12. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Smith, "Claude Shannon: Digital Pioneer's Work Still Reverberates", MIT Alumni Association, 2011-08-15 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  13. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: McCarthy, "A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, August 31, 1955", AI Magazine, 2006-12-15, p. 12; Solomonoff, "The Meeting of the Minds That Launched AI", May 6, 2023 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  14. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Weisstein, "Shannon, Claude Elwood (1916–2001)", World of Scientific Biography; "Claude Shannon – computer science theory", www.thocp.net (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  15. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: James, "Claude Elwood Shannon, 30 April 1916 – 24 February 2001", Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 2009, p. 257–265 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  16. Wikipedia, "Claude Shannon" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Gleick, "THE LIVES THEY LIVED: CLAUDE SHANNON, B. 1916; Bit Player", The New York Times Magazine, December 30, 2001, p. Section 6, Page 48 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  17. Tse, "How Claude Shannon Invented the Future", December 22, 2020. facts only, no text reused. quantamagazine.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Claude Shannon (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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