Information Theory
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Wikipedia - Information theory
People
Claude Shannon
Founder of information theory
http://neilsloane.com/doc/shannon.html
Harry Nyquist
Invented communications theory
From wikipedia:
As reported in The Idea Factory, the Bell Labs patent lawyers wanted to know why some people were so much more productive (in terms of patents) than others. After crunching a lot of data, they found that the only thing the productive employees had in common (other than having made it through the Bell Labs hiring process) was that “… Workers with the most patents often shared lunch or breakfast with a Bell Labs electrical engineer named Harry Nyquist. It wasn’t the case that Nyquist gave them specific ideas. Rather, as one scientist recalled, ‘he drew people out, got them thinking.” (Pg. 135)
Ralph Hartley
The hartley unit (one decimal digit) is named after him
John R. Pierce
Coined “transistor”
Worked on Pulse Code Modulation with Shannon