I had classes with David Huffman (who worked under Fano) of Shannon-Fano coding. He was an amazing instructor. My advisor was Glen Langdon who worked closely

I had classes with David Huffman (who worked under Fano) of Shannon-Fano coding. He was an amazing instructor. My advisor was Glen Langdon who worked closely with Jorma Rissanen on arithmetic coding. While not in my daily job, the knowledge spent on the challenges these relationships brought remind me of how our forbears have set foundations for us to build on. I still deeply follow, but don't research in, data compression, information theory, etc. The name Claude Shannon was a large part of my academic and research years.