Shannon, Claude Elwood


Shannon, Claude Elwood,

1916–2001, American applied mathematician, b. Gaylord, Michigan. A student of Vannevar BushBush, Vannevar
, 1890–1974, American electrical engineer and physicist, b. Everett, Mass., grad. Tufts College (B.S., 1913). He went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1919; there he was professor (1923–32) and vice president and dean of engineering
..... Click the link for more information.  at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he was the first to propose the application of symbolic logicsymbolic logic
or mathematical logic,
formalized system of deductive logic, employing abstract symbols for the various aspects of natural language. Symbolic logic draws on the concepts and techniques of mathematics, notably set theory, and in turn has contributed to
..... Click the link for more information.  to the design of relay circuitry with his paper "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" (1938). His insight that all data could be encoded as a series of 1's and 0's pioneered the breakthrough in digital electronics that led to the modern digital computer and telecommunications networks. Shannon worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1941–72 and initiated the field of information theoryinformation theory
or communication theory,
mathematical theory formulated principally by the American scientist Claude E. Shannon to explain aspects and problems of information and communication.
..... Click the link for more information.  with his 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," which was retitled The Mathematical Theory of Communication when published in 1949 with a preface by Warren WeaverWeaver, Warren,
1894–1978, American scientist, b. Reedsburg, Wis., grad. Univ. of Wisconsin. He taught mathematics at Wisconsin (1920–32), was director of the division of natural sciences at the Rockefeller Institute (1932–55), and was science consultant
..... Click the link for more information. . Shannon returned to MIT in 1958, although he remained a consultant with Bell Telephone. Over the next two decades his curiosity about the fledgling field of artificial intelligenceartificial intelligence
(AI), the use of computers to model the behavioral aspects of human reasoning and learning. Research in AI is concentrated in some half-dozen areas.
..... Click the link for more information.  led him to build and experiment with such things as chess-playing, maze-solving, juggling, and mind-reading machines.

Bibliography

See C. E. Shannon et al., Claude Elwood Shannon: Collected Papers (1993).

Shannon, Claude Elwood

 

Born Apr. 30, 1916, in Gaylord, Mich., USA. American scientist and engineer; one of the founders of mathematical information theory. Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1956) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Shannon graduated from the University of Michigan in 1936. From 1941 to 1957 he was a research mathematician with Bell Telephone Laboratories. In 1941 he became a consultant for the National Defense Research Committee. Shannon became a professor of electrical engineering and mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1957.

Shannon’s principal works deal with the algebra of logic, the theory of relay and switching systems, the mathematical theory of communication, information theory, and cybernetics.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Raboty po teorii informatsii i kibernetike. Moscow, 1963.