Claude Shannon, arguably one of the greatest electronic engineers of the 20th century (which would be "ever" I guess) even went to Von Neumann for advice. The "

Claude Shannon, arguably one of the greatest electronic engineers of the 20th century (which would be "ever" I guess) even went to Von Neumann for advice. The "novelty" of a signal was thus named "entropy" (inverse thereof) because of how Von Neumann understood information theory fitted into the broader picture of theoretical physics. Entropy = Amount of Disorder in a System = 1 / Novelty, or something like that. Point is, Von Neumann didn't just understand Shannon's ground breaking new theory right away, but also understood how it tessellated with all the other ground-breaking theories of the day.