Nominator's statement

Claude Shannon's creation of information theory is arguably one of the great intellectual achievements of the twentieth century. Information theory has had an important and significant influence on mathematics, particularly on probability theory and ergodic theory, and Shannon's mathematics is in its own right a considerable and profound contribution to pure mathematics. But Shannon did his work primarily in the context of communication engineering, and it is in this area that it stands as a unique monument. In this classical paper and its sequels, he formulated a model of a communication system that is distinctive for its generality as well as for its amenability to mathematical analysis. He formulated the central problems of theoretical interest, and gave a brilliant and elegant solution to these problems.

This paper can be downloaded from Bell Labs

comments

• Shannon's analysis had a great impact on cognitive science because it provided a way of quantifying information. This work was one of the seminal precursors of the "information-processing" paradigm in cognitive science.

• What is the world's mean?

• We make use of Shannon's work in so many areas of research. I believe this is an important work and should be on this list.