Claude Shannon

Shannon dual-degreed in electrical engineering and mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1936, then arrived at MIT for a master's. His 1937 thesis demonstrated that electrical circuits using Boolean algebra could construct any logical relationship - the theory behind all digital computing, called by some the most important master's thesis ever written. He earned his PhD in mathematics in 1940, then spent World War II on cryptanalysis for the U.S., writing foundational work that closed classical cryptography and opened the modern era. In 1948 he published "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", which defined information as a measurable quantity and created the field of information theory - the backbone of the Internet, mobile telephony, compact discs, and more. He formally introduced the term "bit", co-invented pulse-code modulation and the first wearable computer, co-organized the 1956 Dartmouth workshop that founded artificial intelligence as a discipline, and built Theseus, an electrical mouse that learned by trial and error. He taught at MIT from 1956 to 1978 and won the Kyoto Prize in 1985.