Born on April 30, 1916, in Petoskey, Michigan, Claude Elwood Shannon was a tinkerer. At twelve, he attempted to create a telegraph using barbed wire. Though he failed, his curiosity about the telegraph and communications in general sparked a huge revolution in how we communicate. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, he began his graduate studies at MIT, where he studied Vannevar Bush's differential analyzer, a mechanical machine for calculating differential equations. For his Master's thesis, he wrote about how the switches on the analyzer were similar to the True or False of Boolean Algebra. He observed it was a binary choice whose output could be stored using one of two digits. He chose 1 and 0. Also, binary digit was eventually shortened to: bit. And for this Master's thesis, Claude Shannon received... the Noble Prize. OK, not THAT Nobel Prize, a different one. But it was still a prestigious award which came with prize money and a write up in the New York Times - it wouldn't be his last one! That Master's Thesis was hailed by many as the MOST IMPORTANT one of the 20th Century.
Then Shannon became a National Research Fellow at Princeton, where he encountered people such as Einstein and Kurt Gödel. He met and married his first wife and all seemed well. However, all of Shannon's superiors were interested in more "practical things", sending him into a spiral of sadness which resulted in his wife divorcing him. Shannon, later claiming he could "smell the war" coming ("the war" being World War II), then quit his Fellowship to work at Bell Labs.
Shannon went to Bell Labs mostly to avoid the draft for the war. At Bell Labs, he was assigned to calculate firearm trajectories; however, he was much more interested in cryptography and encrypted communications. He soon began working on breaking German codes and keeping Allied ones safe. However, unlike many others, Shannon thought more deeply, asking questions such as, "Is there an unbreakable code?" His work on wartime cryptography was very closely related to his work on Communication Theory.
For a very long time, some say since he arrived at Princeton, Shannon had been working to create a mathematical theory of communication, known now as Communication Theory. He referred to it in an earlier paper in 1945, but did not publish a paper on it until 1948. When he published it, it was very well received. The paper focused on how to best encode the information the sender wants to transmit. Shannon even drew a diagram to show how the information moves:
Shannon predicted that there was a speed limit at which you could send the code without losing any necessary information. He also predicted that there were codes for shortening your message into the shortest possible length without deleting any necessary information. And, in 1993, the codes were found by a team of Chinese and Thai programmers. In 1956, Shannon was offered a position as a professor at MIT and accepted. He taught there until 1978. Among his hobbies were uni-cycling and juggling. Shannon invented many things, including the first form of AI and a flame-throwing trumpet. The AI was a little mouse trapped in a Labyrinth. It could remember the route and navigate the maze efficiently. Claude Elwood Shannon died in 2001.
Even now, we still benefit from the innovations, ideas, and inventions of this great man. He certainly should be a household name. But unlike Einstein or Newton, who he arguably out shined, he is remembered nearly nowhere. If you mention Claude Shannon to someone in a conversation, they will probably ask, "who's he?" without knowing their lives are much better because of his innovations. So I ask you to tell your friends about Claude Shannon, so we might spread the word and establish Claude Shannon in his rightful place as a household name.
For a very long time, some say since he arrived at Princeton, Shannon had been working to create a mathematical theory of communication, known now as Communication Theory. He referred to it in an earlier paper in 1945, but did not publish a paper on it until 1948. When he published it, it was very well received. The paper focused on how to best encode the information the sender wants to transmit. Shannon even drew a diagram to show how the information moves:
Shannon predicted that there was a speed limit at which you could send the code without losing any necessary information. He also predicted that there were codes for shortening your message into the shortest possible length without deleting any necessary information. And, in 1993, the codes were found by a team of Chinese and Thai programmers. In 1956, Shannon was offered a position as a professor at MIT and accepted. He taught there until 1978. Among his hobbies were uni-cycling and juggling. Shannon invented many things, including the first form of AI and a flame-throwing trumpet. The AI was a little mouse trapped in a Labyrinth. It could remember the route and navigate the maze efficiently. Claude Elwood Shannon died in 2001.
Even now, we still benefit from the innovations, ideas, and inventions of this great man. He certainly should be a household name. But unlike Einstein or Newton, who he arguably out shined, he is remembered nearly nowhere. If you mention Claude Shannon to someone in a conversation, they will probably ask, "who's he?" without knowing their lives are much better because of his innovations. So I ask you to tell your friends about Claude Shannon, so we might spread the word and establish Claude Shannon in his rightful place as a household name.
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