Claude Shannon

Claude Shannon was a mathematician and electrical engineer who is considered by many to be one of the founding fathers of the computing age, beginning with his influential M.I.T. master's thesis of 1938, followed by a decades-long, highly productive career in research at Bell Laboratories. In the 1940's during World War II, Shannon's research was funded additionally by the U. S. govenment to work on cryptography issues, culminating in a seminal paper, published in 1948, which arguably established a new area of study in engineering called information theory. Information theory was devoted to messages and signals and communications and computing; it involved techniques largely drawn from the mathematical science of probability.

In addition the solid recognition among Shannon's contemporary colleagues, Shannon grew into a figure of some public and popular acclaim by the time of his retirement. An enormous amount of material exists about him on the web, and also in the deep web (i.e., online resources which must be paid for). The material overwhelmingly praises Shannon's influence, not just on communications and computers, but also on thinking about biological processes and linguistics. This article will not attempt to create yet another biography of Claude Shannon, but it will provide pointers to multiple existing biographies which already describe his life in great detail. This article will try to outline his seminal accomplishments and provide pointers to additional reading on each topic.

Claude Shannon's seminal works include:

• ‘‘A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography,’’ Memorandum MM 45-110-02, 1 Sept. 1945, Bell Laboratories. Classified at the time of its publication; now available through the British Library.
• ‘‘A Mathematical Theory of Communication,’’ Bell System Technical J., vol. 27,

July and Oct. 1948, pp. 379-423 and 623-656, respectively.