Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 - February 24, 2001) has been called "the father of information theory", and was the founder of practical digital circuit design theory. April 30 is the 120th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (121st in leap years), with 245 days remaining, as the last day in April. ... 1916 is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar) Events January-February January 1 -The first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. ... February 24 is the 55th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 2001 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Information theory is a branch of the mathematical theory of probability and mathematical statistics that quantifies the concept of information. ... Digital circuits are electric circuits based on a number of discrete voltage levels. ...

Biography

Shannon was born in Petoskey, Michigan and was a distant relative of Thomas Edison. While growing up, he worked as a messenger for Western Union. This article is about the town; for the type of rock, see Petoskey Stone. ... Thomas Alva Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many important devices. ... Western Union is an American financial services and communications company. ...

In 1932, Shannon began studying at the University of Michigan, where he eventually encountered a course that introduced him to the works of George Boole. He graduated from the university in 1936 with two bachelor's degrees, one in electrical engineering and one in mathematics, and he then moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate school, where he worked on Vannevar Bush's differential analyzer, an analog computer. 1932 is a leap year starting on a Friday. ... University of Michigan, Ann Arbor The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public coeducational university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. ... George Boole [], (November 2, 1815 Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England - December 8, 1864 Ballintemple, County Cork, Ireland) was a mathematician and philosopher. ... 1936 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Media:Example. ... Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline that deals with the study and application of electricity and electromagnetism. ... Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Mathematics Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about: Mathematics Look up Mathematics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Wikimedia Commons has more media related to: Mathematics Bogomolny, Alexander: Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research institution and university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts directly across the Charles River from Bostons Back Bay district. ... Vannevar Bush (March 11, 1890–June 30, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor, and politician, known for his political role in the development of the atomic bomb, and idea of the memex —seen as a pioneering concept for the world wide web. ... The differential analyser was a mechanical analog computer invented by Vannevar Bush in 1927. ... An analog computer (American English) or analogue computer (British English) is a form of computer using electronic or mechanical phenomena to model the problem being solved by using one kind of physical quantity to represent another. ...

In his 1937 MIT master's thesis, A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits, Shannon proved that Boolean algebra and binary arithmetic could be used to simplify the arrangement of the electromechanical relays then used in telephone routing switches, then turned the concept upside down and also proved that it should be possible to use arrangements of relays to solve Boolean algebra problems. This concept, of utilizing the properties of electrical switches to do logic, is the basic concept that underlies all electronic digital computers, and the thesis became the foundation of practical digital circuit design when it became widely known among the electrical engineering community during and after World War II. Contemporaneous methods to design logic circuits at the time were ad hoc and lacked the theoretical rigor that Shannon's paper supplied to later projects. 1937 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research institution and university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts directly across the Charles River from Bostons Back Bay district. ... In formal logic, mathematics and computer science, Boolean algebras, or Boolean lattices, are algebraic structures which capture the essence of the logical operations AND, OR and NOT as well as the corresponding set-theoretic operations intersection, union and complement. ... The binary or base-two numeral system is a system for representing numbers in which a radix of two is used; that is, each digit in a binary numeral may have either of two different values. ... Relay as used in cars A relay is an electromechanical switch that uses an electromagnet to open or close one or many sets of contacts. ... Digital circuits are electric circuits based on a number of discrete voltage levels. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air. ...

Professor Howard Gardner, of Harvard University, called Shannon's thesis "possibly the most important, and also the most famous, master's thesis of the century". A version of the paper was published in the 1938 issue of the Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and in 1940, it earned Shannon the Alfred Noble American Institute of American Engineers Award. Howard Gardner Howard Gardner (born 1943 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA)is a cognitive and educational psychologist based at Harvard University best known for his theory of multiple intelligences. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... 1938 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1940 was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Flush with this success, Vannevar Bush suggested that Shannon work on his dissertation at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, funded by the Carnegie Institution headed by Bush, to develop similar mathematical relationships for Mendelian genetics, which resulted in Shannon's 1940 PhD thesis at MIT, An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics. Shannon then joined Bell Labs to work on fire-control systems and cryptography during World War II. He returned to MIT to hold an endowed chair in 1956. The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a research and educational institution, consisting of science laboratories located in Cold Spring Harbor, New York on Long Island, USA. The Laboratory has research programs focusing on cancer, neurobiology, plant genetics, genomics and bioinformatics, and has a broad educational mission, including the recently established... Gregor Johann Mendel Gregor Johann Mendel (July 22, 1822 – January 6, 1884) was a Czech-Austrian monk who is often called the father of genetics for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants. ... Genetics (from the Greek genno γεννώ= give birth) is the science of genes, heredity, and the variation of organisms. ... 1940 was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. ... Bell Telephone Laboratories or Bell Labs was originally the research and development arm of the United States Bell System, and was the premier corporate facility of its type, developing a range of revolutionary technologies from telephone switches to specialized coverings for telephone cables, to the transistor. ...

In 1948 Shannon published A Mathematical Theory of Communication. This work focuses on the problem of how to best encode the information a sender wants to transmit. In this fundamental work he used tools in probability theory, developed by Norbert Wiener, which were in their nascent stages of being applied to communication theory at that time. Shannon developed information entropy as a measure for the uncertainty in a message while essentially inventing what became known as the dominant form of "information theory." The book co-authored with Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, reprints Shannon's 1948 article and Weaver's popularization of it, which is accessible to the non-specialist. Another notable paper published in 1949 is Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems, a major contribution to the development of a mathematical theory of cryptography. He is also credited with the introduction of the Sampling Theory, which is concerned with representing a continuous-time signal from a (uniform) discrete set of samples. 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... A Mathematical Theory of Communication, published in 1948 by mathematician and computer scientist Claude Shannon, was one of the founding works of the field of information theory. ... Information is a term with many meanings depending on context, but is as a rule closely related to such concepts as meaning, knowledge, instruction, communication, representation, and mental stimulus. ... Entropy of a Bernoulli trial as a function of success probability. ... Warren Weaver is an author of the well-known work on communication, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (together with Claude Shannon). ... 1949 is a common year starting on Saturday. ... Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems is a paper published by Claude Shannon discussing cryptography from the viewpoint of information theory. ... See also: Topics in cryptography The security of all practical encryption schemes remains unproven, both for symmetric and asymmetric schemes. ... The Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is the fundamental theorem in the field of information theory, in particular telecommunications. ...

Outside of his academic pursuits, Shannon was interested in juggling, unicycling, and chess. He also invented many devices, including a chess-playing machine (rather described how one could operate in a paper published in 1950), a rocket-powered pogo stick, a wearable computer to predict the result of playing roulette [1] (http://c2000.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs8113c_99_spring/readings/thorp.pdf), and a flame-throwing trumpet for a science exhibition. He met his wife Betty when she was a numerical analyst, i.e., a "computer," at Bell Labs. In its general sense, juggling can refer to all forms of artful or skillful object manipulation. ... Cycling is a recreation, a sport, and a means of transport across land. ... Chess is a board game and mental sport for two players. ... This page is about the game. ... Bell Telephone Laboratories or Bell Labs was originally the research and development arm of the United States Bell System, and was the premier corporate facility of its type, developing a range of revolutionary technologies from telephone switches to specialized coverings for telephone cables, to the transistor. ...

From 1956 to 1978 he was a professor at MIT. To commemorate his achievements, there were celebrations of his work in 2001, and there are currently three copies of a statue of Shannon: one at the University of Michigan, one at MIT in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems and one at Bell Labs. 1956 was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research institution and university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts directly across the Charles River from Bostons Back Bay district. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research institution and university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts directly across the Charles River from Bostons Back Bay district. ... The MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems is a research labotarory of MIT, working in the areas of communication, controls, and signal processing. ...

Awards and honors

• Alfred Noble American Institute of American Engineers Award in 1940
• Morris Liebmann Memorial Award of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1949
• Yale University (Master of Science) in 1954
• Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1955
• Research Corporation Award in 1956
• University of Michigan, honorary doctorate, in 1961
• Rice University Medal of Honor in 1962
• Princeton University, honorary doctorate, in 1962
• Marvin J. Kelly Award in 1962
• University of Edinburgh, honorary doctorate, in 1964
• University of Pittsburgh, honorary doctorate, in 1964
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honor in 1966
• National Medal of Science in 1966, presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson
• Golden Plate Award in 1967
• Northwestern University, honorary doctorate, in 1970
• Harvey Prize, the Technion of Haifa, Israel in 1972
• University of Oxford, honorary doctorate, in 1978
• Joseph Jacquard Award in 1978
• Harold Pender Award in 1978
• University of East Anglia, honorary doctorate, in 1982
• Carnegie-Mellon University, honorary doctorate, in 1984
• Audio Engineering Society Gold Medal in 1985
• Kyoto Prize in 1985
• Tufts University, honorary doctorate, in 1987
• University of Pennsylvania, honorary doctorate, in 1991
• Eduard Rhein Prize in 1991

1940 was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Following several attempts to form a technical organization of wireless practitioners in 1908-1912, the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) was finally established in 1912 in New York. ... 1949 is a common year starting on Saturday. ... This article is about the institution of higher learning in the United States. ... 1954 was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Franklin Institute is the national memorial to Benjamin Franklin, that serves to perpetuate his legacy; the museum contains many of Franklins personal effects. ... 1955 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1956 was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... University of Michigan, Ann Arbor The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public coeducational university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. ... 1961 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Rice University Rice University is housed in the Museum District of Houston, Texas. ... 1962 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Princeton University, located in Princeton, New Jersey, is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. ... 1962 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1962 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland. ... 1964 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The University of Pittsburgh is a state-related university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ... 1964 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (pronounced as eye-triple-ee) is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity. ... 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science, also called the Presidential Medal of Science, is an honor given by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social... 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... Order: 36th President Vice President: Hubert H. Humphrey Term of office: November 22, 1963 – January 20, 1969 Preceded by: John F. Kennedy Succeeded by: Richard M. Nixon Date of birth: August 27, 1908 Place of birth: Gillespie County, Texas Date of death: January 22, 1973 Place of death: Johnson City... 1967 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Arch, the main entrance to Northwesterns Evanston campus Northwestern University is a private university situated in Evanston, Illinois, on a 240 acre (970,000 m²) campus along the shores of Lake Michigan. ... 1970 was a common year starting on Thursday. ... The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology (הטכניון - מכון טכנולוגי לישראל) is a university in Haifa, Israel. ... For the Lebanese singer, see Haifa Wahbe Haifa (Hebrew חיפה; Arabic حيفا Ḥayfā) is the third-largest city in Israel, with a population close to 300,000. ... 1972 was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ... Joseph Marie Jacquard. ... 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ... Harold Pender (1879–1959) was an academic, author, and inventor. ... 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ... The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a campus university located in Norwich, Norfolk, England, founded as part of the British Governments New Universities programme in the 1960s. ... 1982 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ... 1984 is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Established in 1948, the Audio Engineering Society (AES) draws its membership from amongst engineers, scientists, manufacturers and other organisations and individuals with an interest or involvement in the professional audio industry. ... 1985 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Kyoto Prize (京都賞) has been awarded annually since 1984 in the fields of Advanced Technology, Basic Sciences and Arts and Philosophy. ... 1985 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Tufts University is a university located in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts (near Boston). ... 1987 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The University of Pennsylvania (commonly referred to as Penn or UPenn, although the former is the preferred and recognized nickname of the University) is a private university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a member of the Ivy League. ... 1991 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Prof. ... 1991 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• Shannon-Fano coding
• Shannon-Hartley law
• Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem
• Shannon capacity
• Shannon game
• Rate distortion theory
• Information theory
• Confusion and diffusion
• One-time pad

In the field of data compression, Shannon-Fano coding is a technique for constructing a prefix code based on a set of symbols and their probabilities (estimated or measured). ... In information theory, the Shannon-Hartley theorem states the maximum amount of error-free digital data (that is, information) that can be transmitted over a communication link with a specified bandwidth in the presence of noise interference. ... The Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is the fundamental theorem in the field of information theory, in particular telecommunications. ... In information theory, the Shannon-Hartley theorem states the maximum amount of error-free digital data (that is, information) that can be transmitted over a communication link with a specified bandwidth in the presence of noise interference. ... Rate distortion theory is the branch of information theory addressing the problem of determining the minimal amount of entropy (or information) R that should be communicated over a channel such that the source (input signal) can be reconstructed at the receiver (output signal) with given distortion D. As such, rate... Information theory is a branch of the mathematical theory of probability and mathematical statistics that quantifies the concept of information. ... In cryptography, confusion and diffusion are two properties of the operation of a secure cipher which were identified by Shannon in his paper, Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems published in 1949. ... In cryptography, the one-time pad (OTP) is the only theoretically unbreakable method of encryption: the plaintext is combined with a random pad the same length as the plaintext. ...

References

• C. E. Shannon: A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 27, pp. 379-423 and 623-656, July and October, 1948.
• Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver: The Mathematical Theory of Communication. The University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1949. ISBN 0252725484

External links

• Summary of Shannons' life and career (http://www.lucent.com/minds/infotheory/who.html)
• Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems (http://www3.edgenet.net/dcowley/docs.html)
• A Mathematical Theory of Communication (http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/paper.html)
• Obituary at MIT (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/shannon.html)
• Obituary Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (in Dutch) (http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/levensbericht-shannon.pdf)
• Retrospective at the University of Michigan (http://www.engin.umich.edu/150th/alum-legends/shannon.html)
• Notes on Computer-Generated Text (http://www.nightgarden.com/infosci.htm)
• Shannonizer An example of his work (http://www.nightgarden.com/shannon.htm)
• Shannon's Juggling Theorem and Juggling Robots (http://www2.bc.edu/~lewbel/Shannon.html)
• Shannon's paper on computer chess, text (http://www.pi.infn.it/%7Ecarosi/chess/shannon.txt)
• Shannon's paper on computer chess, PDF (http://www.ascotti.org/programming/chess/Shannon%20-%20Programming%20a%20computer%20for%20playing%20chess.pdf)
• Shannon's paper on computer chess, text, alternate source (http://www.dcc.uchile.cl/~cgutierr/cursos/IA/shannon.txt)