Claude Shannon

Claude Shannon
Claude Shannon
	Shannon c. 1950s
Born	Claude Elwood Shannon; April 30, 1916; Petoskey, Michigan, U.S.
Died	February 24, 2001 (aged 84); Medford, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Michigan (AB, BS); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS, PhD)
Known for	Information theory; "A Mathematical Theory of Communication"; A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits; "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems"; Artificial intelligence; Beta distribution; Binary code; Block cipher; Boolean algebra; Channel capacity; Computer chess; Data compression; Digital electronics; Digital Revolution; Digital subscriber line; Edge coloring; Entropy in information theory; Entropy (information theory) ; Entropy power inequality; Error-correcting codes with feedback; Evaluation function; Financial signal processing; Information processing; Information-theoretic security; Innovation (signal processing); Key size; Logic gate; Logic synthesis; Minivac 601; Models of communication; n-gram; Noisy channel coding theorem; Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem; One-time pad; Product cipher; Pulse-code modulation; Rate–distortion theory; Sampling; Shannon–Fano coding; Shannon–Hartley law; Shannon capacity; Shannon entropy; Shannon's expansion; Shannon index; Shannon's Maxim; Shannon multigraph; Shannon number; Shannon security; Shannon's source coding theorem; Shannon switching game; Shannon-Weaver model of communication; Stream cipher; Switching circuit theory; Symbolic dynamics; Uncertainty coefficient; Units of information; Useless machine; Wearable computer; Whittaker–Shannon interpolation formula;
Spouse(s)	Norma Levor (1940–41) ; Betty Shannon (1949–2001)
Awards	Stuart Ballantine Medal (1955); IEEE Medal of Honor (1966); National Medal of Science (1966); Harvey Prize (1972); Claude E. Shannon Award (1972); Harold Pender Award (1978); John Fritz Medal (1983); Kyoto Prize (1985); Marconi Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2000); National Inventors Hall of Fame (2004);
	Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics, computer science, electronic engineering
Institutions	Bell Labs; MIT; Institute for Advanced Study;
Theses	A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits (1937); An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics (1940);
Doctoral advisor	Frank Lauren Hitchcock
Doctoral students	Danny Hillis; Leonard Kleinrock; Ivan Sutherland; Bert Sutherland;

Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist and cryptographer known as the "father of information theory", he was the first to describe the boolean gates (electronic circuits) that are essential to all digital electronic circuits, and he built the first machine learning device thus founding the field of artificial intelligence. He is credited alongside George Boole for laying the foundations of the Information Age.

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, thereby establishing the theory behind digital computing and digital circuits. In 1987, Howard Gardner called his thesis "possibly the most important, and also the most famous, master's thesis of the century", and Herman Goldstine described it as "surely ... one of the most important master's theses ever written ... It helped to change digital circuit design from an art to a science."

Shannon also contributed to the field of cryptanalysis for national defense of the United States during World War II, including his fundamental work on codebreaking and secure telecommunications, writing a paper which is considered one of the foundational pieces of modern cryptography, and whose work "was a turning point, and marked the closure of classical cryptography and the beginning of modern cryptography."

His mathematical theory of communication laid the foundations for the field of information theory, with his famous paper being called the "Magna Carta of the Information Age" by Scientific American, along with his work being described as being at "the heart of today's digital information technology".

His Theseus machine was the first electrical device to learn by trial and error. It is was thus the first example of artificial intelligence.

Rodney Brooks declared that Shannon was the 20th century engineer who contributed the most to 21st century technologies. His achievements are said to be on par with those of Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton in their fields.

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