American engineer Claude Shannon and what he is famous for. Biography and interesting facts. Who is Claude Shannon and why is he famous? What is Claude Shannon famous for briefly?

2016 marked one hundred years since the birth of Claude Shannon. “And what is he famous for?” - those who have nothing to do with cybernetics and the theory of automatic control will probably ask. And all initiates, of course, will understand that we are talking about the author of a number of theorems that are taught in technical departments at universities and which are called Shannon’s theorems. Later in the article we will tell you about the life and work of this outstanding cybernetics scientist and engineer. The story of his life is interesting and sometimes even a little fantastic.

Claude Shannon: biography and why is he famous?

The future scientist was born on April 30, 1916 in the USA, the city of Petocki, which is located on Lake Michigan. His father was a lawyer by profession, and his mother was a teacher of foreign languages. However, both he and his older sister were interested in mathematics since childhood. Katherine Shannon joined the mathematics department and later became a professor and taught at the university. Claude himself initially followed in his father’s footsteps and, after graduating from university, worked in a law office. Along with this, he was involved in radio engineering at an amateur level. By the way, Thomas Edison himself was a distant relative of the future famous engineer and inventor. Of course, he could not reach the level of his famous relative, because he had more than 1900 patents in his arsenal.

Education

Claude studied at a comprehensive high school, and at the same time he received additional education at home. Despite the fact that the father wanted his son, like him, to become a lawyer, Shannon Sr. also wanted to develop his son’s logic and ingenuity and constantly bought him construction sets, various amateur radio sets, etc. By this he wanted to promote the so-called technical creativity of his son. Claude's sister, Catherine, in turn, involved him in mathematics, increasingly asking him various interesting problems. As a result, the future lawyer simply adored both technology and mathematics. And yet, he graduated from law school, and after some time he was already studying for a bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan in two specialties at once - electrical engineering and mathematics - what Claude Shannon is famous for. And he, despite such a load, was able to graduate from both faculties with honors.

Scientific activity

After K. Shannon graduated from the university, he got a job as a research assistant in the electrical engineering laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute. Here he worked on methods for modernizing V. Bush's differential analyzer. Later, the scientist became his supervisor and mentor. A year later, Shannon decides to enroll in graduate school. During his studies, he wrote an article on the topic “Symbolic analysis of switching circuits and relays.” It was published in AIEE, a publication of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. This work of his immediately attracted the attention of the scientific community of electrical engineers, and in 1939 the American Society of Civil Engineers awarded him the. despite the fact that he had not yet managed to defend his master’s degree. After that, they began to talk about him more and more in scientific circles, now many knew who Claude Shannon was and why he was famous. This attitude from his colleagues encouraged the scientist, and at the insistence of his teacher and mentor Bush, he decided not to wait to defend his master’s thesis and immediately began his doctorate, which was devoted to the problems of gene combinatorics.

Scientific contribution

Unfortunately, Shannon’s doctoral thesis did not receive support from geneticists and was not published anywhere, but his master’s thesis was recognized as a breakthrough in switching and digital technology. In the last chapter of his dissertation, Shannon gave many different examples, including how the method of logical calculus he developed could be successfully applied to the synthesis and analysis of specific switching and relay circuits: a lock with an electrical secret, selector circuits, binary adders, etc. All this clearly demonstrates the scientific breakthrough, as well as the enormous practical benefits of logical calculus developed by the young American scientist. It was thanks to him that digital logic was born. This is what he is famous for - Claude Shannon. The scientist wrote a summary of this course specifically for university students.

Activity

In 1941, K. Shannon began working at the Bell Laboratories research center in the mathematics department. He was only 25 years old then. Among his colleagues were such scientists as Harry Nyquist, Henrik Bode, Ralph Hartley, John Tukey and others. It was an excellent team, each of whose members had excellent results in the development of information theory. And yet it was Shannon who subsequently developed them to the level of great science. With the outbreak of World War II, the US government began to widely finance research projects carried out by Bell Laboratories, which concentrated the best minds of its time. The government was primarily interested in developing the method of mathematical cryptography, and this is exactly what he, Claude Shannon, did. What is this work famous for? It made it possible to analyze enemy encrypted texts using information-theoretical methods.

New concepts

In 1945, towards the end of the war, the scientist was able to complete his exclusive secret report on the topic “Mathematical Theory of Cryptography” and was ready to speak to the American scientific community and present his new basic concepts on information theory. In 1948, the landmark work “Mathematical Theory of Communication” was published - what Claude Shannon is famous for. And he presented in it all his developments that were made in the period from 1945 to 1948. His mathematical theory of communication assumed a 3-component structure, which consists of a source of information, a “transport medium” and an information receiver. “Transport medium” is a communication channel that is characterized by the ability to distort information during transmission. In this regard, problems were identified to which Shannon had to give comprehensive answers, for example, how to quantify information, how to effectively “package” it, how to estimate the permissible speed when outputting information from a source, and then send it to a communication channel with a certain, fixed throughput. And finally, the scientist had to solve the problem of eliminating interference in the communication channel. He, of course, was able to cope with the tasks assigned to him, and not only theoretically (his colleagues in the workshop helped him in this matter), but through the theorems he himself created.

K. Shannon's theory

His seminal work was stated in the form of 23 theorems. True, not all of them are equivalent - some are of an auxiliary nature or are devoted to certain particular cases of information theory or its transmission through discrete and continuous connected channels, but 6 theorems are of particular value and, in fact, are conceptual. This is the framework of the “building” - the theory of Claude Shannon, for which he is famous. This is briefly described in specialized literature. It should also be said that at the initial stage, this theory raised doubts among many mathematicians around the world. However, over time, the entire scientific community became convinced that the postulates given by the young man were correct.

Claude Elwood Shannon(English: Claude Elwood Shannon; April 30, 1916, Petocki, Michigan, USA - February 24, 2001, Medford, Massachusetts, USA) - American engineer, cryptanalyst and mathematician. Considered the “father of the information age.”

He is the founder of information theory, which has found application in modern high-tech communication systems. Provided fundamental concepts, ideas and their mathematical formulations that currently form the basis for modern communication technologies. In 1948, he proposed using the word “bit” to denote the smallest unit of information (in the article “Mathematical Theory of Communication”). In addition, the concept of entropy was an important feature of Shannon's theory. He demonstrated that the entropy he introduced is equivalent to a measure of the uncertainty of the information in the transmitted message. Shannon's papers "A Mathematical Theory of Communications" and "The Theory of Communications in Secret Systems" are considered fundamental to information theory and cryptography. Claude Shannon was one of the first to approach cryptography from a scientific point of view; he was the first to formulate its theoretical foundations and introduce many basic concepts. Shannon made key contributions to the theory of probabilistic circuits; game theory; the theory of automata and the theory of control systems are areas of science included in the concept of “cybernetics”.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Claude Shannon was born on April 30, 1916 in Petocki, Michigan, USA. His father, Claude Sr. (1862-1934), was a self-made businessman, lawyer and for some time a judge. Shannon's mother, Maybelle Woolf Shannon (1890-1945), was a foreign language teacher who later became principal of Gaylord High School. Shannon's father had a mathematical mind and was aware of his words. Shannon was instilled with a love of science by his grandfather. Shannon's grandfather was an inventor and farmer. He invented the washing machine along with many other equipment useful in agriculture. Thomas Edison was a distant relative of the Shannons.

Claude spent the first sixteen years of his life in Gaylord, Michigan, where he graduated from Gaylord Comprehensive High School in 1932. In his youth, he worked as a courier for Western Union. Young Claude was interested in designing mechanical and automatic devices. He collected model airplanes and radio circuits, created a radio-controlled boat and a telegraph system between a friend's house and his own. At times he had to repair radios for a local department store.

Shannon, in his own words, was an apolitical person and an atheist.

University years

In 1932, Shannon was enrolled at the University of Michigan, where in one of his courses he became acquainted with the works of George Boole. In 1936, Claude graduated from the University of Michigan with a double major in mathematics and electrical engineering and went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he worked as a research assistant. He performed operator duties on a mechanical computing device, an analog computer called a "differential analyzer", developed by his supervisor Vanevar Bush. By studying the complex, highly specialized electrical circuits of a differential analyzer, Shannon saw that Boole's concepts could be put to good use. After working the summer of 1937 at Bell Telephone Laboratories, he wrote a paper based on his master's thesis that year, "Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits." It should be noted that Frank Lauren Hitchcock supervised the master's thesis and provided useful criticism and advice. The article itself was published in 1938 in the publication of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). In this work, he showed that switching circuits could be used to replace the electromechanical relay circuits then used to route telephone calls. He then extended this concept by showing that these circuits could solve all the problems that Boolean algebra could solve. Also, in the last chapter, he presents the prototypes of several circuits, for example, a 4-bit adder. For this article, Shannon was awarded the Alfred Nobel Prize by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1940. The proven ability to implement any logical calculations in electrical circuits formed the basis for the design of digital circuits. And digital circuits are, as we know, the basis of modern computing technology, thus, the results of his work are one of the most important scientific results of the twentieth century. Howard Gardner of Harvard University called Shannon's work "perhaps the most important, as well as the most famous master's thesis of the century."

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 known for writing the foundations of information theory, Mathematical Communication Theory, which he published in 1948. At the age of 21, while a master's student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he wrote a dissertation proving that any logical, numerical relations can be constructed by electrical application of Boolean algebra. Claude Elwood Shannon made major contributions to the field of cryptanalysis for national defense during World War II, including his major work on codebreaking and telecommunications reliability.

In 1950, Shannon published a paper on computer chess entitled "Programming a Computer to Play Chess." He describes how a machine or computer can be programmed to play logic games, like chess. The so-called minimax procedures are responsible for the computer's move process, based on an assessment of the function of a given chess position. Shannon gave a crude example of evaluating a function in which the value of the black position was subtracted from the white position. The values ​​were calculated based on the score of a regular chess piece (1 point for a pawn, 3 points for a knight or bishop, 5 points for a rook, and 9 points for a queen). He looked at some positional factors, subtracting 0.5 points for each doubled pawn, backward and isolated pawns, and adding 0.1 point for each good move. Quote from the document:

“The coefficients 0.5 and 0.1 are just a rough estimate by the writer. In addition, there are many other conditions that must be included. The formula is given for clarity only.”

In 1932, Shannon was enrolled at the University of Michigan, where in one of his courses he became acquainted with the works of George Boole. In 1936, Claude graduated from the University of Michigan with a double major in mathematics and electrical engineering and went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he worked as a research assistant. He performed operator duties on a mechanical computing device, an analog computer called a "differential analyzer", developed by his supervisor Vanevar Bush. By studying the complex, highly specialized electrical circuits of a differential analyzer, Shannon saw that Boole's concepts could be put to good use. After working the summer of 1937 at Bell Telephone Laboratories, he wrote a paper based on his master's thesis that year, "Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits." It should be noted that Frank Lauren Hitchcock supervised the master's thesis and provided useful criticism and advice. The article itself was published in 1938 in the publication of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). In this work, he showed that switching circuits could be used to replace the electromechanical relay circuits then used to route telephone calls. He then extended this concept by showing that these circuits could solve all the problems that Boolean algebra could solve. Also, in the last chapter, he presents the prototypes of several circuits, for example, a 4-bit adder. For this article, Shannon was awarded the Alfred Nobel Prize by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1940. The proven ability to implement any logical calculations in electrical circuits formed the basis for the design of digital circuits. And digital circuits are, as we know, the basis of modern computing technology, thus, the results of his work are one of the most important scientific results of the twentieth century. Howard Gardner of Harvard University called Shannon's work "perhaps the most important, as well as the most famous master's thesis of the century."

On Bush's advice, Shannon decided to pursue a doctorate in mathematics at MIT. Bush was appointed president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington and invited Shannon to take part in the work on genetics led by Barbara Burks. It was genetics, according to Bush, that could serve as the subject of Shannon's efforts. Shannon himself, having spent a summer in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, became interested in finding a mathematical basis for Mendel's laws of inheritance. Shannon's doctoral dissertation, entitled "The Algebra of Theoretical Genetics", was completed in the spring of 1940. However, this work was not released until 1993, when it appeared in Shannon's Collected Papers. His research might otherwise have become quite important, but most of these results were obtained independently of him. Shannon is pursuing a PhD in mathematics and a master's degree in electrical engineering. After this he did not return to research in biology.

Shannon was also interested in the application of mathematics to information systems such as communications systems. After another summer spent at Bell Labs in 1940 Shannon became a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, USA for one academic year. There he worked under the guidance of the famous mathematician Hermann Weyl, and also had the opportunity to discuss his ideas with influential scientists and mathematicians, including John von Neumann. He also had chance meetings with Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel. Shannon worked freely in a variety of disciplines, and this ability may have contributed to the further development of his mathematical information theory.

Claude Ellwood Shannon was an award-winning American mathematician, electronics engineer, and cryptographer known as the creator of information theory.

It was our hero who once proposed using the concept of “bit”, known to everyone today, as the equivalent of the smallest unit of information.

Shannon became famous as the man who gave birth to information theory in a landmark paper he published in 1948. In addition, he is also credited with the idea of ​​​​creating the digital computer and digital technologies in general, back in 1937, when Shannon was a 21-year-old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working on his master's degree - he then wrote a dissertation in which he demonstrated that the use of Boolean algebras in the field of electronics could construct and solve any logical, numerical

communications. An article based on his dissertation earned him a prize from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1940.

During World War II, Shannon made significant contributions to the field of cryptanalysis while working on national defense, including his seminal project on breaking codes and ensuring secure telecommunications.

Shannon was born on April 30, 1916 in Petoskey, Michigan, and grew up in nearby Gaylord, Michigan. His father was one of those self-made men. A descendant of early New Jersey settlers, he was a businessman and judge. Claude's mother taught English and for some time headed the

Gaylord Elementary School. Shannon spent most of the first 16 years of his life in Gaylord, and graduated from the local school in 1932. Since childhood, he was interested in designing mechanical and electrical models. His favorite subjects were science and mathematics, and in his free time at home, he built model airplanes, a radio-controlled model boat, and even a wireless telegraph that connected him to the house of a friend who lived half a mile from the Shannons.

As a teenager, Claude worked part-time as a courier for Western Union. His childhood hero was Thomas Edison, who, as it later turned out, was also a distant relative. They were both descendants

ami John Ogden, a 17th-century colonial leader and ancestor of many prominent people. What Shannon wasn't interested in was politics. Moreover, he was an atheist.

In 1932, Claude became a student at the University of Michigan, where one of the courses introduced him to the intricacies of Boole algebra. After graduating in 1936 with two bachelor's degrees, in mathematics and electrical engineering, he continued his studies at MIT, where he worked on one of the first analog computers, the Vannevar Bush differential analyzer - it was then that he realized that the concepts of Boolean algebra could be applied to more useful. Shannon's thesis for the degree m

master's thesis was entitled "Symbolic Analysis of Relays and Switches" and is considered by experts to be one of the most important master's theses of the 20th century.

In the spring of 1940, Shannon received his doctorate in mathematics from MIT with a dissertation on "Algebra for Theoretical Genetics," and for the next 19 years, from 1941 to 1956, he taught at the University of Michigan and worked at Bell Labs, where his interest was sparked by fire protection systems. and cryptography (this is what he did during World War II).

At Bell Labs, Shannon met his future wife, Betty Shannon, who worked in numerical analysis. They married in 1949. In 1956, Shannon returned to MIT,

where he was offered a chair, and worked there for 22 years.

His hobbies included juggling, unicycle riding and chess. He invented a variety of fun gadgets, including rocket-powered flying discs, a motorized grasshopper, and a fire-emitting tube for a science fair. He is also credited, along with Edward O. Thorp, as the inventor of the first portable computer - they used this device to improve the chances of winning at roulette, and their forays into Las Vegas were very successful.

Shannon spent his final years in a nursing home, suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He passed away on February 24, 2001.