(Roughly) Daily

Readers will know of your correspondent’s fascination with the remarkable Claude Shannon (see here and here), remembered as “the father of information theory,” but seminally involved in so much more. In a recent piece in IEEE Spectrum, the redoubtable Rodney Brooks argues that we should add another credit to Shannon’s list…

Among the great engineers of the 20th century, who contributed the most to our 21st-century technologies? I say: Claude Shannon.

Shannon is best known for establishing the field of information theory. In a 1948 paper, one of the greatest in the history of engineering, he came up with a way of measuring the information content of a signal and calculating the maximum rate at which information could be reliably transmitted over any sort of communication channel. The article, titled “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” describes the basis for all modern communications, including the wireless Internet on your smartphone and even an analog voice signal on a twisted-pair telephone landline. In 1966, the IEEE gave him its highest award, the Medal of Honor, for that work.

If information theory had been Shannon’s only accomplishment, it would have been enough to secure his place in the pantheon. But he did a lot more…

In 1950 Shannon published an article in Scientific American and also a research paper describing how to program a computer to play chess. He went into detail on how to design a program for an actual computer…

Shannon did all this at a time when there were fewer than 10 computers in the world. And they were all being used for numerical calculations. He began his research paper by speculating on all sorts of things that computers might be programmed to do beyond numerical calculations, including designing relay and switching circuits, designing electronic filters for communications, translating between human languages, and making logical deductions. Computers do all these things today…

The “father of information theory” also paved the way for AI: “How Claude Shannon Helped Kick-start Machine Learning,” from @rodneyabrooks in @IEEESpectrum.

* Claude Shannon (who may or may not have been kidding…)

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As we ponder possibility, we might send uncertain birthday greetings to Werner Karl Heisenberg; he was born on this date in 1901.  A theoretical physicist, he made important contributions to the theories of the hydrodynamics of turbulent flows, the atomic nucleus, ferromagnetism, superconductivity, cosmic rays, and subatomic particles.  But he is most widely remembered as a pioneer of quantum mechanics and author of what’s become known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.  Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1932 “for the creation of quantum mechanics.”

During World War II, Heisenberg was part of the team attempting to create an atomic bomb for Germany– for which he was arrested and detained by the Allies at the end of the conflict.  He was returned to Germany, where he became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, which soon thereafter was renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics. He later served as president of the German Research Council, chairman of the Commission for Atomic Physics, chairman of the Nuclear Physics Working Group, and president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Some things are so serious that one can only joke about them

Werner Heisenberg

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