Claude Shannon

Claude Shannon (1916-2001) was a theoretical mathematician and electrical engineer who is considered by many to be one of the foundational researches in computer and communications design. His first influential publication was his M.I.T. master's thesis of 1937; this was the first application of Boolean algebra to electronic circuits, a technique that has been standard ever since. It was followed by a span of intensively productive years in research at Bell Laboratories, after which Shannon returned to M.I.T. as a professor. In his twilight years, he suffered from Alzheimer's Disease.

In the 1940's during World War II, Shannon performed classified research for the U. S. government on cryptography; this period culminated in a seminal two-part paper which launched the field of information theory. Information theory is devoted to messages and signals using techniques drawn from mathematical probability, and linking discrete and continuous mathematics in ways that later turned out to be helpful, not just in the fields of communications and computers, but also on thinking about biological processes and linguistics.

Recognized as a premier voice in the engineering community from the 1940's onward, Shannon had become a figure of some public and popular acclaim by the time of his retirement. An enormous number of resources exist about him on the web, and also in the deep web (i.e., online resources which must be paid for). 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.

Shannon's publications

See our list of Shannon's publications.