Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory".
In this form it is known as "Shannon's maxim". ==Commemorations== ===Shannon centenary=== The Shannon centenary, 2016, marked the life and influence of Claude Elwood Shannon on the hundredth anniversary of his birth on April 30, 1916.
was a descendant of New Jersey settlers, while Mabel was a child of German immigrants. Most of the first 16 years of Shannon's life were spent in Gaylord, where he attended public school, graduating from Gaylord High School in 1932.
Both Shannon and Edison were descendants of John Ogden (1609–1682), a colonial leader and an ancestor of many distinguished people. ===Logic circuits=== In 1932, Shannon entered the University of Michigan, where he was introduced to the work of George Boole.
He graduated in 1936 with two bachelor's degrees: one in electrical engineering and the other in mathematics. In 1936, Shannon began his graduate studies in electrical engineering at MIT, where he worked on Vannevar Bush's differential analyzer, an early analog computer.
Turing showed Shannon his 1936 paper that defined what is now known as the "Universal Turing machine".
Shannon is noted for having founded information theory with a landmark paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", which he published in 1948. He is also well known for founding digital circuit design theory in 1937, when—as a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—he wrote his thesis demonstrating that electrical applications of Boolean algebra could construct any logical numerical relationship.
In 1937, he wrote his master's degree thesis, A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits.
Shannon: A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits, master's thesis, MIT, 1937. Claude E.
A paper from this thesis was published in 1938.
Shannon Award was established in his honor; he was also its first recipient, in 1972. Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute, 1955 Harvey Prize, the Technion of Haifa, Israel, 1972 Alfred Noble Prize, 1939 (award of civil engineering societies in the US) National Medal of Science, 1966, presented by President Lyndon B.
Howard Gardner called Shannon's thesis "possibly the most important, and also the most noted, master's thesis of the century." Shannon received his PhD from MIT in 1940.
This research resulted in Shannon's PhD thesis, called An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics. In 1940, Shannon became a National Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
The device was used to improve the odds when playing roulette. ===Personal life=== Shannon married Norma Levor, a wealthy, Jewish, left-wing intellectual in January 1940.
Shannon worked freely across disciplines, and this ability may have contributed to his later development of mathematical information theory. ===Wartime research=== Shannon then joined Bell Labs to work on fire-control systems and cryptography during World War II, under a contract with section D-2 (Control Systems section) of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). Shannon is credited with the invention of signal-flow graphs, in 1942.
There is also a student competition Bell Labs launched a Web exhibit on April 30, 2016, chronicling Shannon's hiring at Bell Labs (under an NDRC contract with US Government), his subsequent work there from 1942 through 1957, and details of Mathematics Department.
He discovered the topological gain formula while investigating the functional operation of an analog computer. For two months early in 1943, Shannon came into contact with the leading British mathematician Alan Turing.
This impressed Shannon, as many of its ideas complemented his own. In 1945, as the war was coming to an end, the NDRC was issuing a summary of technical reports as a last step prior to its eventual closing down.
At the close of the war, he prepared a classified memorandum for Bell Telephone Labs entitled "A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography", dated September 1945.
Shannon is noted for having founded information theory with a landmark paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", which he published in 1948. He is also well known for founding digital circuit design theory in 1937, when—as a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—he wrote his thesis demonstrating that electrical applications of Boolean algebra could construct any logical numerical relationship.
He also proved that any unbreakable system must have essentially the same characteristics as the one-time pad: the key must be truly random, as large as the plaintext, never reused in whole or part, and be kept secret. ===Information theory=== In 1948, the promised memorandum appeared as "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", an article in two parts in the July and October issues of the Bell System Technical Journal.
In so doing, he essentially invented the field of information theory. The book The Mathematical Theory of Communication reprints Shannon's 1948 article and Warren Weaver's popularization of it, which is accessible to the non-specialist.
27, pp. 379–423, 623–656, 1948 (abstract). Claude E.
A declassified version of this paper was published in 1949 as "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems" in the Bell System Technical Journal.
In a footnote near the beginning of the classified report, Shannon announced his intention to "develop these results … in a forthcoming memorandum on the transmission of information." While he was at Bell Labs, Shannon proved that the cryptographic one-time pad is unbreakable in his classified research that was later published in October 1949.
They were married in 1949.
Shannon's mouse appears to have been the first artificial learning device of its kind. ===Shannon's estimate for the complexity of chess=== In 1949 Shannon completed a paper (published in March 1950) which estimates the game-tree complexity of chess, which is approximately 10120.
brute force analysis). ===Shannon's computer chess program=== On March 9, 1949, Shannon presented a paper called "Programming a Computer for playing Chess".
The University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1949.
Drawn from interviews conducted with Shannon in his house in the 1980s, the film was released on Amazon Prime in August 2020. ==Other work== ===Shannon's mouse=== "Theseus", created in 1950, was a mechanical mouse controlled by an electromechanical relay circuit that enabled it to move around a labyrinth of 25 squares.
Shannon's mouse appears to have been the first artificial learning device of its kind. ===Shannon's estimate for the complexity of chess=== In 1949 Shannon completed a paper (published in March 1950) which estimates the game-tree complexity of chess, which is approximately 10120.
In March 1950 it was published in Philosophical Magazine, and is considered one of the first articles published on the topic of programming a computer for playing chess, and using a computer to solve the game. His process for having the computer decide on which move to make was a minimax procedure, based on an evaluation function of a given chess position.
Shannon's concepts were also popularized, subject to his own proofreading, in John Robinson Pierce's Symbols, Signals, and Noise. Information theory's fundamental contribution to natural language processing and computational linguistics was further established in 1951, in his article "Prediction and Entropy of Printed English", showing upper and lower bounds of entropy on the statistics of English – giving a statistical foundation to language analysis.
Shannon Award was established in his honor; he was also its first recipient, in 1972. Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute, 1955 Harvey Prize, the Technion of Haifa, Israel, 1972 Alfred Noble Prize, 1939 (award of civil engineering societies in the US) National Medal of Science, 1966, presented by President Lyndon B.
This theory was essential in enabling telecommunications to move from analog to digital transmissions systems in the 1960s and later. He returned to MIT to hold an endowed chair in 1956. ===Teaching at MIT=== In 1956 Shannon joined the MIT faculty to work in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE).
There is also a student competition Bell Labs launched a Web exhibit on April 30, 2016, chronicling Shannon's hiring at Bell Labs (under an NDRC contract with US Government), his subsequent work there from 1942 through 1957, and details of Mathematics Department.
This theory was essential in enabling telecommunications to move from analog to digital transmissions systems in the 1960s and later. He returned to MIT to hold an endowed chair in 1956. ===Teaching at MIT=== In 1956 Shannon joined the MIT faculty to work in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE).
It was sold by the Scientific Development Corp starting in 1961. He is also considered the co-inventor of the first wearable computer along with Edward O.
Shannon Award was established in his honor; he was also its first recipient, in 1972. Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute, 1955 Harvey Prize, the Technion of Haifa, Israel, 1972 Alfred Noble Prize, 1939 (award of civil engineering societies in the US) National Medal of Science, 1966, presented by President Lyndon B.
Shannon Award was established in his honor; he was also its first recipient, in 1972. Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute, 1955 Harvey Prize, the Technion of Haifa, Israel, 1972 Alfred Noble Prize, 1939 (award of civil engineering societies in the US) National Medal of Science, 1966, presented by President Lyndon B.
He continued to serve on the MIT faculty until 1978. ===Later life=== Shannon developed Alzheimer's disease and spent the last few years of his life in a nursing home; he died in 2001, survived by his wife, a son and daughter, and two granddaughters. === Hobbies and inventions === Outside of Shannon's academic pursuits, he was interested in juggling, unicycling, and chess.
Drawn from interviews conducted with Shannon in his house in the 1980s, the film was released on Amazon Prime in August 2020. ==Other work== ===Shannon's mouse=== "Theseus", created in 1950, was a mechanical mouse controlled by an electromechanical relay circuit that enabled it to move around a labyrinth of 25 squares.
(Available online under External links below) David Levy: Computer Gamesmanship: Elements of Intelligent Game Design, Simon & Schuster, 1983.
Rogers, Claude Shannon's Cryptography Research During World War II and the Mathematical Theory of Communication, 1994 Proceedings of IEEE International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology, pp. 1–5, 1994.
Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory".
He continued to serve on the MIT faculty until 1978. ===Later life=== Shannon developed Alzheimer's disease and spent the last few years of his life in a nursing home; he died in 2001, survived by his wife, a son and daughter, and two granddaughters. === Hobbies and inventions === Outside of Shannon's academic pursuits, he was interested in juggling, unicycling, and chess.
The whole digital revolution started with him." The unit shannon is named after Claude Shannon. A Mind at Play, a biography of Shannon written by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman, was published in 2017. On April 30, 2016 Shannon was honored with a Google Doodle to celebrate his life on what would have been his 100th birthday. The Bit Player, a feature film about Shannon directed by Mark Levinson premiered at the World Science Festival in 2019.
In this form it is known as "Shannon's maxim". ==Commemorations== ===Shannon centenary=== The Shannon centenary, 2016, marked the life and influence of Claude Elwood Shannon on the hundredth anniversary of his birth on April 30, 1916.
There is also a student competition Bell Labs launched a Web exhibit on April 30, 2016, chronicling Shannon's hiring at Bell Labs (under an NDRC contract with US Government), his subsequent work there from 1942 through 1957, and details of Mathematics Department.
The whole digital revolution started with him." The unit shannon is named after Claude Shannon. A Mind at Play, a biography of Shannon written by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman, was published in 2017. On April 30, 2016 Shannon was honored with a Google Doodle to celebrate his life on what would have been his 100th birthday. The Bit Player, a feature film about Shannon directed by Mark Levinson premiered at the World Science Festival in 2019.
The whole digital revolution started with him." The unit shannon is named after Claude Shannon. A Mind at Play, a biography of Shannon written by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman, was published in 2017. On April 30, 2016 Shannon was honored with a Google Doodle to celebrate his life on what would have been his 100th birthday. The Bit Player, a feature film about Shannon directed by Mark Levinson premiered at the World Science Festival in 2019.
Drawn from interviews conducted with Shannon in his house in the 1980s, the film was released on Amazon Prime in August 2020. ==Other work== ===Shannon's mouse=== "Theseus", created in 1950, was a mechanical mouse controlled by an electromechanical relay circuit that enabled it to move around a labyrinth of 25 squares.
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