Pioneers
Claude Shannon
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Claude Shannon was an American mathematician and electrical engineer whose 1937 master's thesis showed that Boolean algebra could be used to design and analyze electrical switching circuits, laying groundwork for digital circuit design, and whose 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication founded the field of information theory, giving a precise mathematical meaning to the idea of information and defining the bit as its basic unit.
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His 1948 information theory paper and especially his 1949 cryptography paper laid the foundations of modern cryptography.
Cryptography, Fields Claude Shannon's 1949 paper Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems put cryptography on a rigorous mathematical footing for the first time, founding the field's modern theoretical basis.
Sources
1. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster, 2014
Wikipedia: Claude Shannon
Wikimedia FoundationLead sectionQuote, Lead section
Claude Elwood Shannon was an American polymath who was a mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist, cryptographer, and inventor known as the 'father of information theory'
Wikipedia: Claude Shannon
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Information Security, Wartime research sectionQuote, Associated With: Information Security, Wartime research section
a turning point, and marked the closure of classical cryptography and the beginning of modern cryptography
Wikipedia: Cryptography
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Cryptography, Modern cryptography sectionQuote, Associated With: Cryptography, Modern cryptography section
Claude Shannon's two papers, his 1948 paper on information theory, and especially his 1949 paper on cryptography, laid the foundations of modern cryptography and provided a mathematical basis for future cryptography.
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