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Not included in the article: Boolean algebra, invented by an English philosopher in the 1840s, and applied to a new context almost 100 years later in what may b

Not included in the article: Boolean algebra, invented by an English philosopher in the 1840s, and applied to a new context almost 100 years later in what may be the most influential MS thesis of all time, Claude Shannon's "Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits".

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
Claude Shannon's contributions to modern technology can't be overstated and yet his name is relatively unknown. Edit: used "underestimated" when I mean "overstated"
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  It's interesting that you see things that way because I kind of think it's the opposite. He's very well known and I'd argue his work is generally over rated. His main contribution is a specialization of Von Neumann entropy, which was defined over 20 years earlier. And also some extensions of the work of Nyquist and Hartley in the form of the noisy channel coding theorem. His work is good and putting it together the way he did was influential. But he's often talked about as the "father of information theory" which has a bit of a hero worship spin to it. I also suspect -- but this is just my own speculation -- that Von Neumann helped Shannon arrive at the point of view he's famous for. It's known that Von Neumann told Shannon to call his formula "entropy". But Von Neumann was also foundational to computer science and quantum mechanics and was generous to giving credit to others. Shannon didn't really do much of the same caliber after the information theory paper. So the timeline is he has this encounter with Von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study. Then he puts out a paper that synthesizes the work Bell Labs had been doing and which happens to be at the intersection of some of Von Neumann's interests, and then doesn't do much after that. So I've always kind of wondered whether Von Neumann had a short conversation with Shannon where he lays out how he's thinking about information and entropy. And then Shannon took that and ran with it. But again that's just me wondering.
  - cma 2y ago
    Wiener also had independent work on information theory around then.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago

Claude Shannon's contributions to modern technology can't be overstated and yet his name is relatively unknown. Edit: used "underestimated" when I mean "overstated"

ants_everywhere 2y ago
It's interesting that you see things that way because I kind of think it's the opposite. He's very well known and I'd argue his work is generally over rated. His main contribution is a specialization of Von Neumann entropy, which was defined over 20 years earlier. And also some extensions of the work of Nyquist and Hartley in the form of the noisy channel coding theorem. His work is good and putting it together the way he did was influential. But he's often talked about as the "father of information theory" which has a bit of a hero worship spin to it. I also suspect -- but this is just my own speculation -- that Von Neumann helped Shannon arrive at the point of view he's famous for. It's known that Von Neumann told Shannon to call his formula "entropy". But Von Neumann was also foundational to computer science and quantum mechanics and was generous to giving credit to others. Shannon didn't really do much of the same caliber after the information theory paper. So the timeline is he has this encounter with Von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study. Then he puts out a paper that synthesizes the work Bell Labs had been doing and which happens to be at the intersection of some of Von Neumann's interests, and then doesn't do much after that. So I've always kind of wondered whether Von Neumann had a short conversation with Shannon where he lays out how he's thinking about information and entropy. And then Shannon took that and ran with it. But again that's just me wondering.
- cma 2y ago
  Wiener also had independent work on information theory around then.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]