Claude Elwood Shannon (1916 - 2001)

Born 30 Apr 1916 in Petoskey, Michigan, United States

Ancestors

Died 24 Feb 2001 at age 84 in Medford, Massachusetts, United States

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Claude Shannon is Notable.

Claude Shannon was awarded the National Medal of Science.

Biography

Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory". Shannon founded information theory with a landmark paper, " A Mathematical Theory of Communication", which he published in 1948.

Early Life

Claude was born in Petoskey, MI, near Gaylord. His father, Claude, Sr. (1862–1934), a descendant of early settlers of New Jersey, was a self-made businessman, and for a while, a Judge of Probate. Shannon's mother was Mabel Wolf Shannon (1890–1945) who was a language teacher and served as the principal of Gaylord High School.

Education

After attending primary and secondary school in his neighboring hometown of Gaylord, he earned bachelors degrees in both electrical engineering and mathematics from the University of Michigan where he was also introduced to the work of George Boole.

He started his graduate program at MIT in 1936. While at M.I.T., he worked with Dr. Vannevar Bush on one of the early calculating machines, the "differential analyzer".

Career

In 1941, Shannon took a position at Bell Labs, where he had spent several prior summers. Shannon, as a young scientist at Bell Laboratories, wrote two papers that remain monuments in the fields of computer science and information theory.

Shannon’s most important paper was "A mathematical theory of communication". This fundamental treatise both defined a mathematical notion by which information could be quantified and demonstrated that information could be delivered reliably over imperfect communication channels like phone lines or wireless connections. As noted by Ioan James, Shannon biographer for the Royal Society, “So wide were its repercussions that the theory was described as one of humanity’s proudest and rarest creations, a general scientific theory that could profoundly and rapidly alter humanity’s view of the world.” Shannon went on to develop many other important ideas whose impact expanded well beyond the field of “information theory” spawned by his 1948 paper.

Shannon approached research with a sense of curiosity, humor, and fun. An accomplished unicyclist, he was famous for cycling the halls of Bell Labs at night, juggling as he went. His later work on chess-playing machines and an electronic mouse that could run a maze helped create the field of artificial intelligence, the effort to make machines that think.

Personal Life

Claude married Norma Levor in 1940 but they divorced a year later. While at Bell Labs, he met Mary Elizabeth "Betty" Moore, a numerical analyst, whom he married in 1949. Betty assisted Claude in building some of his most famous inventions. They had three children. In 1956, Dr. Shannon became a visiting professor at MIT and the family settled on Mystic Lake in Winchester, Mass.

Later Life

Shannon died on Saturday, February 24, 2001 in Medford, Mass., after a long fight with Alzheimer's disease. He was 84.

Notable 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)

National Inventors Hall of Fame (2004)

Sources

• "United States Census, 1920", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MZ7M-J9X : 2 February 2021), Claud Elwood Shannon in entry for Claud E Shannon, 1920.
• "United States Census, 1930", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XQ1B-1J4 : accessed 30 April 2016), Claude E Shannon in entry for Claude E Shannon, 1930.
• National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Registration Cards for New Jersey, 10/16/1940-03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box: 600
• "New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1909, 1925-1957," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L94K-D4N6?cc=1923888&wc=MFKC-GZ9%3A1030215201 : 21 May 2014), 7916 - vol 17243-17245, Nov 17, 1950 > image 686 of 1483; citing NARA microfilm publication T715 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/210751125/claude-elwood-shannon
• "Massachusetts Death Index, 1970-2003", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VZRC-PXH : 13 June 2019), Claude E Shannon, 2001.
• "United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVTS-WZJC : accessed 30 July 2021), Mathematician Claude Shannon, , ; from "Recent Newspaper Obituaries (1977 - Today)," database, GenealogyBank.com (http://www.genealogybank.com : 2014); citing Associated Press Archive, born-digital text.

Further Reading

• Wikipedia: Claude Shannon

• Wikidata: Item Q92760, en:Wikipedia

• https://spectrum.ieee.org/claude-shannon-tinkerer-prankster-and-father-of-information-theory

• https://www.itsoc.org/about/shannon

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/29/claude-shannon-the-juggling-father-of-the-information-age-who-co/

• https://news.mit.edu/2001/shannon