Claude Elwood Shannon

Shannon was born in Petoskey, Michigan, on April 30, 1916. His father, Claude Sr (1862-1934), a descendant of early New Jersey settlers, was a businessman and for sometime, the Judge of Probate. His mother, Mabel Wolf Shannon (1890-1945), daughter of German immigrants, was a language teacher and for a number of years Principal of Gaylord High School, in Michigan.

The first sixteen years of Shannon's life were spent in Gaylord, Michigan, where he attended public school, graduating from Gaylord High School in 1932. Shannon showed an inclination towards mechanical things. His best subjects were science and mathematics, and at home he constructed such devices as models of planes, a radio-controlled model boat and a telegraph system to a friend's house half a mile away. While growing up, he worked as a messenger for Western Union. His childhood hero was Thomas Edison, who he later learned was a distant cousin. Both were descendants of John Ogden, an important colonial leader and an ancestor of many distinguished people.

In 1936 he accepted the position of research assistant in Department of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT he became famous for his master’s thesis publication in 1937, at the age of 21 years, for being the founder of information theory and both digital computer and digital circuits wherein he articulated that electrical application of Boolean algebra could construct and resolve any logical, numerical relationship, It has been claimed that this was the most important master's thesis of all time.

.(Wyner, 1998; Wikipedia, 2007)