A new Shannon biography, A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, may help reverse this legacy. Authors Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman make a strong bid to expose Shannon’s work to a popular audience, balancing a chronological narrative, the “Eureka!” moments that sprang from his disciplined approach to solving puzzles, and his propensity for playfulness.
Another book with a lengthy section on Claude Shannon is James Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood [1.]. A shorter but still nice explanation in on Brain Pickings [2.].
Is he really unknown? I know most of us don’t do much signal processing these days but you can’t get far in studying compression without hearing about Shannon.
... about the guy who gets credit for figuring out BOTH how to make computers do math, AND how information can be encoded, transmitted and manipulated.
A Mind At Play is an excellent biography of a fascinating mathematician and visionary thinker. Ranges from early life through final years and also does a decent job of introducing his Mathematical Theory of Communication, the basis of modern information theory. A solid 4½ stars.
Another book with a lengthy section on Claude Shannon is James Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood [1.]. A shorter but still nice explanation in on Brain Pickings [2.].
1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the-information 2. https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/06/james-gleick-the-in...