Author | Jimmy Soni, Rob Goodman |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Subject | Claude Shannon |
Genre | Biography |
Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | July 18, 2017 |
Media type | Print (hardcover), e-book, audiobook |
Pages | 384 |
ISBN | 978-1476766683 |
Preceded by | Rome's Last Citizen |
A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age is a biography of Claude Shannon, an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory". [1] [2] The biography was written by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman, and published by Simon & Schuster in 2017. [3] [4] A Mind at Play is the second biography co-authored by Soni and Goodman, the first being a biography of Cato entitled Rome's Last Citizen. [5]
In an interview with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Soni explained that part of the reason he wrote A Mind at Play was that he was drawn to Shannon's personality and wanted to read a biography about him, but "it turned out there wasn’t one." [3]
Shannon was born in Petoskey, Michigan in 1916 and grew up in Gaylord, Michigan. [6] He is well known for founding digital circuit design theory in 1937, when—as a 21-year-old master's degree student at MIT—he wrote his thesis demonstrating that electrical applications of Boolean algebra could construct any logical numerical relationship. [7] In 1948, Shannon published his most influential work, A Mathematical Theory of Communication , in which he is considered to have founded the field of information theory and paved the way for the feasibility of mobile phones, the development of the Internet and many other technological applications. A Mind at Play chronicles these events in Shannon's life as well as his interactions with his peers at the time including Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, Vannevar Bush, John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel, Leonard Kleinrock, Irwin M. Jacobs, Lawrence Roberts, Thomas Kailath, Steve Jobs and others. [8]
Outside of Shannon's professional life, he was interested in juggling, unicycling, and chess. He also invented many devices, including a Roman numeral computer called THROBAC, juggling machines, and a flame-throwing trumpet. [9] He is also considered the co-inventor of the first wearable computer along with Edward O. Thorp. [10] The device was used to improve the odds when playing roulette.
A Mind at Play was reviewed favorably by The Wall Street Journal , Financial Times , Nature , Fortune Magazine and others. [4] [8] [11] Excerpts from the biography have been the feature of various magazines including The Daily Beast and Nautilus . [12] Ruby on Rails founder David Heinemeier Hansson and Amazon chief technology officer Werner Vogels wrote about the book on Twitter. [13] [14]
Internet pioneer Vint Cerf called the book, "a boon for those eager to know more about [Shannon's] incredibly influential life — whimsical, independent and curiosity-driven." [8]
The British Society for the History of Mathematics awarded Soni and Goodman the 2017 Neumann Prize for A Mind at Play. [15] The book also won the silver medal in the Biography category of the Axiom Business Book Awards. [16]
The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as either "1" or "0", but other representations such as true/false, yes/no, on/off, or +/− are also widely used.
Claude Elwood Shannon was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist and cryptographer known as the "father of information theory".
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time and was said to have been "the last representative of the great mathematicians who were equally at home in both pure and applied mathematics". He integrated pure and applied sciences.
Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly concerned with those that are relevant to mathematics as a whole.
Vinton Gray Cerf is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Bob Kahn. He has received honorary degrees and awards that include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Marconi Prize, and membership in the National Academy of Engineering.
Robert Elliot Kahn is an American electrical engineer who, along with Vint Cerf, first proposed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), the fundamental communication protocols at the heart of the Internet.
John Wilder Tukey was an American mathematician and statistician, best known for the development of the fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm and box plot. The Tukey range test, the Tukey lambda distribution, the Tukey test of additivity, and the Teichmüller–Tukey lemma all bear his name. He is also credited with coining the term 'bit' and the first published use of the word 'software'.
Erector Set was a brand of metal toy construction sets which were originally patented by Alfred Carlton Gilbert and first sold by his company, the Mysto Manufacturing Company of New Haven, Connecticut in 1913. In 1916, the company was reorganized as the A.C. Gilbert Company. The brand continued its independent existence under various corporate ownerships until 2000, when Meccano bought the Erector brand and consolidated its worldwide marketing with its own brand. The coverage here focuses on the historical legacy of the classic Erector Set; for current developments under the "Erector by Meccano" brand name, see the Meccano article.
Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Berlekamp was widely known for his work in computer science, coding theory and combinatorial game theory.
"A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is an article by mathematician Claude E. Shannon published in Bell System Technical Journal in 1948. It was renamed The Mathematical Theory of Communication in the 1949 book of the same name, a small but significant title change after realizing the generality of this work. It has tens of thousands of citations which is rare for a scientific article and gave rise to the field of information theory.
Edward Oakley Thorp is an American mathematics professor, author, hedge fund manager, and blackjack researcher. He pioneered the modern applications of probability theory, including the harnessing of very small correlations for reliable financial gain.
Irving Stoy Reed was an American mathematician and engineer. He is best known for co-inventing a class of algebraic error-correcting and error-detecting codes known as Reed–Solomon codes in collaboration with Gustave Solomon. He also co-invented the Reed–Muller code.
The history of computer science began long before the modern discipline of computer science, usually appearing in forms like mathematics or physics. Developments in previous centuries alluded to the discipline that we now know as computer science. This progression, from mechanical inventions and mathematical theories towards modern computer concepts and machines, led to the development of a major academic field, massive technological advancement across the Western world, and the basis of a massive worldwide trade and culture.
A timeline of events related to information theory, quantum information theory and statistical physics, data compression, error correcting codes and related subjects.
The British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) was founded in 1971 to promote research into the history of mathematics at all levels and to further the use of the history of mathematics in education.
Toby Berger was an American information theorist.
Professor Shlomo Shamai (Shitz) (Hebrew: שלמה שמאי (שיץ) ) is a distinguished professor at the Department of Electrical engineering at the Technion − Israel Institute of Technology. Professor Shamai is an information theorist and winner of the 2011 Shannon Award.
Jimmy Soni is an American author and former managing editor of The Huffington Post. He is best known for A Mind at Play, his biography of Claude Shannon and The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is the name given by gambling authors to the four U.S. Army engineers who first discovered in the 1950s the best playing strategy in the casino game of Blackjack that can be formulated on the basis of the player's and the dealer's cards. The so-called Basic Strategy, which was subsequently refined through the use of computers and combinatorial analysis, loses the least money to the casino in the long term.
Betty Shannon was a mathematician and the main research collaborator of Claude Shannon. Betty inspired and assisted Claude in building some of his most famous inventions.