Pioneer
Claude Shannon
Also Known As Claude Elwood Shannon
Theory of Computation
Claude Shannon was an American mathematician and electrical engineer whose 1937 master's thesis showed that Boolean algebra could be used to design and analyze electrical switching circuits, laying groundwork for digital circuit design, and whose 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication founded the field of information theory, giving a precise mathematical meaning to the idea of information and defining the bit as its basic unit.
Facts
AwardNational Inventors Hall of Fame 3 AwardForeign Member of the Royal Society 3 AwardJosiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship 3 AwardKyoto Prize in Basic Sciences 3 AwardEdwin Howard Armstrong Achievement Award 3 AwardIEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award 3 AwardNational Medal of Science 3 AwardStuart Ballantine Medal 3 AwardClaude E. Shannon Award 3 FAQs
What was Theseus, the maze-solving machine Claude Shannon built?
A 1950 relay-driven mechanical mouse that learned its way through a changeable maze by trial and error, an early example of machine learning.
In 1950 Claude Shannon designed and built, with the help of his wife Betty, a learning machine named Theseus. It was a maze with sensors, an electromechanical relay circuit, below the surface that followed a mechanical mouse as it searched the corridors for a target. After the mouse had travelled through the maze it could be placed anywhere it had been before and go directly to the target. If it was placed in unfamiliar territory it searched until it reached a known location, then proceeded to the target and added the new knowledge to its memory. The maze could be changed at will by rearranging movable partitions. Wikipedia describes the mouse as appearing to be the first artificial learning device of its kind.
Connections
Associated With
His 1948 information theory paper and especially his 1949 cryptography paper laid the foundations of modern cryptography.
Source Wikipedia: Cryptography
Cryptography, Fields Claude Shannon's 1949 paper Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems put cryptography on a rigorous mathematical footing for the first time, founding the field's modern theoretical basis.
Source The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital RevolutionWalter Isaacson
Source Wikipedia: Claude Shannon
Credited
Source Shannon-Fano coding (Wikipedia)
In Field
Source Wikipedia: Claude Shannon
In the Other Atlases
Nationality
Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Sources
1. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster, 2014
2. Wikipedia: Claude Shannon
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 - February 24, 2001) was an American polymath who was a mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist, cryptographer, and inventor known as the "father of information theory", and the man who laid the foundations of the Information Age.
Associated With: Information Security, Wartime research section
a turning point, and marked the closure of classical cryptography and the beginning of modern cryptography
- In Field: Cryptography, Lead paragraph
View the Source 3. Wikidata: Claude Shannon
Wikipedia: Cryptography
WikipediaAssociated With: Cryptography, Modern cryptography sectionQuote, Associated With: Cryptography, Modern cryptography section
Claude Shannon's two papers, his 1948 paper on information theory, and especially his 1949 paper on cryptography, laid the foundations of modern cryptography and provided a mathematical basis for future cryptography.
Shannon-Fano coding (Wikipedia)
Credited: Shannon-Fano Coding Algorithm, LeadQuote, Credited: Shannon-Fano Coding Algorithm, Lead
In the field of data compression, Shannon-Fano coding, named after Claude Shannon and Robert Fano, is one of two related techniques for constructing a prefix code based on a set of symbols and their probabilities (estimated or measured).
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