Google Doodle commemorates 'father of information theory' Claude Shannon on his 100th birthday

Today’s Google Doodle honours the ‘father of information theory’ - Claude Shannon. It would have been his hundredth birthday today. Born on this day in 1916, Shannon was an American mathematician, electrical engineer and cryptographer. Shannon was best known for having founded the information theory in a landmark paper he published in 1948. He is equally famous for founding the digital computer and digital circuit design theory in 1937, as a 21 year old student pursuing his master’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Shannon also contributed to the field of cryptanalysis for national defense during World War II, including his basic work on code-breaking and secure telecommunications. The Google Doodle blog says that for fun, he tinkered with electronic switches, and one of his inventions–an electromechanic mouse he called Theseus–could teach itself to navigate a maze. “If you’re thinking, “wait, that sounds a lot like artificial intelligence,” you’re right. He regularly brushed shoulders with Einstein and Alan Turing, and his work in electronic communications and signal processing–the stuff that earned him the moniker “the father of information theory”–led to revolutionary changes in the storage and transmission of data,” explains the blog. The Google Doodle shows him juggling the numbers 0 and 1 - homage to his reputation of being a world-class prankster and a juggler, along with being such a celebrated academician.