Claude Shannon

Claude Shannon (1916-2001?) was a theoretical mathematician and electrical engineer who is considered by many to be one of the founding fathers of computer and communications design, beginning with his influential M.I.T. master's thesis of 1938, then a span of productive years in research at Bell Laboratories, followed by a return to M.I.T. as a professor. 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 using techniques drawn from the mathematical science of probability; it linked discrete and continuous math branches in ways that turned out to be highly useful later on in multiple areas of science.

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.

Shannon's publications

Below is a list of some of Shannon's publications (in order of appearance):

1. A symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits, Thesis (M.S.), Massachusetts Insitute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, 1937 (graduation finalized in 1940).
2. 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.
3. A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Bell System Technical Journal, published in two parts: July, vol. 27, pp. 379-423, and Oct., vol. 28, pp. 623-656, 1948.
   1. This paper introduced what was later called the Shannon sampling theorem, which described the required frequency needed to sample an analog signal before digitizing it, so that the receiver could perfectly reconstruct the analog signal at the other end of a transmission channel.
   2. This paper had important implications about the maximum amount of information that could be shoved into a given amount of spectrum before being overwhelmed by noise, a fundamental limit that became known as Shannon's Law.
4. Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems, Bell System Technical J., vol. 28, pp. 656-715, 1949.
5. Communication In The Presence Of Noise, Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), vol. 37, pp. 10–21, Jan. 1949.
   1. This paper extends and elaborates on A Mathematical Theory of Communication
   2. Reprinted in Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 72, Issue 9, pp, 1192-1201, Sept. 1984.
   3. Reprinted in Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 86, Issue 2, pp. 447-457, Feb. 1998.
6. Probability of error for optimal codes in a Gaussian channel, Bell Systems Technical Journal, vol. 38, pp. 611–656, 1959.