| Citation | Dr. Claude Elwood Shannon has had a most distinguished career, including many academic Degrees, Professorships and honours (see the attached extract from Who's Who in the World) but the strength of this present nomination rests primarily on his literally epoch-making paper, 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication' published in the Bell System Technical Journal (27, 379-423, 623-656, July, October 1948), and subsequently (1949) in book form.
The sensible physical universe may be regarded as comprising space-energy-matter but has no content or interest in the absence of structure and order. The imposition of order and structure, whether by a conscious agency or by operation of the so-called Laws of Physics, requires what we call Information. The way in which information enables disorder to be overcome was already implicit in the Maxwell Demon.
For a long time the concept of Information was, as it remains in common speech, imprecise and qualitative. Attempts were made to overcome this lack of definition, notably by Hartley (Hartley, R.F.L. 'Transmission of Information', Bell Syst. Tech. J., 7, 324, April 1924) and Nyquist (Nyquist, H., 'Certain Factors Affecting Telegraph Speed', Bell Syst. Tech. J., 11, 128, January 1932) from around 1930. Although these attempts were partially successful, there remained the problem of 'subjective factors' which could not be incorporated satisfactorily into the theory.
These difficulties were finally overcome, and a complete new synthesis effected, by Claude Shannon's 1948 paper. He demonstrated how a definition of Quantity of Information could be formulated which was both self-consistent and unique in relation to intuitive axioms. This is a milestone in mankind's understanding comparable and analogous to the way in which in Physics definitions were formulated of Quantity of Matter and Quantity of Energy, thus enabling the great Conservative Laws of Physics to be stated and made meaningful. Concepts of matter and energy were thus made into quantitative physical and engineering entities.
Shannon's formulation similarly made Information into a scientific and engineering quantity. He showed how the measure of quantity of Information led to the concept of Channel Capacity and thus to the Fundamental Theorems for the noiseless and for the noisy channel. These theorems are fundamental to all practical information systems. Shannon thereby also showed how Information, hitherto thought of as a relatively vague and abstract idea, was precisely related to physical energy and thermodynamic entropy.
Because structure, and therefore information, is fundamental to Physics, so also is the Shannon theory of Information. It is also fundamental to Physics in a second way, namely that all measurement and instrumentation systems of Physics are dependent on their ability to handle information. The systematic design and optimisation of measurement essentially requires Information Theory.
The nomination is also timely because the 'Information Explosion', comprising both the transformations of information in computers and the transmission of information by optical, satellite and other means, makes Information a basic commodity of our culture and civilization, just as Energy has been since the last century. It is impossible properly to design, optimize or understand information systems without reliance on the theory which Shannon established. To attempt to dispense with this theory is like attempting to design a locomotive or power station without understanding thermodynamics. |