Bell Labs: Claude Shannon, Father of Information Theory, Dies at 84

[ Thanks to D.Manchester for this link.
]

“Claude Elwood Shannon, the mathematician who laid the
foundation of modern information theory while working at Bell Labs
in the 1940s, died on Saturday. He was 84.”

“Shannon’s theories are as relevant today as they were when he
first formulated them. “It was truly visionary thinking,” said Arun
Netravali, president of Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs. “As if
assuming that inexpensive, high-speed processing would come to
pass, Shannon figured out the upper limits on communication rates.
First in telephone channels, then in optical communications, and
now in wireless, Shannon has had the utmost value in defining the
engineering limits we face.”

“In 1948 Shannon published his landmark A Mathematical Theory of
Communication. He begins this pioneering paper on information
theory by observing that “the fundamental problem of communication
is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately
a message selected at another point.” He then proceeds to so
thoroughly establish the foundations of information theory that his
framework and terminology remain standard.”

Complete
Story