Speaking of unsung geniuses there is someone who I am always surprised people don't mention more. Everyone knows of Turing - no doubt related to the tragic nature of his death due to disgusting treatment and the ubiquity of his eponymous machine - but not as many know of or laud this person whose influence is at least as great. I guess that is partially of his own fashioning.
He laid the practical foundation of digital circuits by noting the applicability of boolean algebra to circuit design. Electronic devices and computers are descendants of his work. After a brief hiatus to work on mathematical biology and cryptography he laid the foundation to the internet with his work on Communications/Information theory and contributions to sampling. His work on information theory is also vital in machine learning, Natural language parsing, compression and more; it finds utility in quantum physics and controversy in gravitational physics. He also had some of the earliest working examples of wearable computing, algorithmic trading, and artificial intelligence.
Arguably, mores so than any scientist of recent times, there is not a person whose work more thoroughly infuses and touches our lives than Claude Shannon.
I don't get why geniuses need to be sung as if it's a popularity contest. It's virtually impossible to do information theory without stumbling on Shannon's theorems just like it's not possible to do physics without Dirac. Those who need to know, do know.
They need to be sung because they can motivate people like me who read their stories in isolation and proceed to cultivate an interest in science. The sung heroes shape the tide of the collective imagination.
There is no need for affectations of wisdom; in an economy of attention, merit just as popularity is a component in the vector of notability. Seeking to not acknowledge these things in the name of purity only polarizes and does no one any good.
I nominate Emmy Noether, whose work on the relationship between mathematical symmetry and conservation laws is still the heart of theoretical physics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
Comments
Speaking of unsung geniuses there is someone who I am always surprised people don't mention more. Everyone knows of Turing - no doubt related to the tragic nature of his death due to disgusting treatment and the ubiquity of his eponymous machine - but not as many know of or laud this person whose influence is at least as great. I guess that is partially of his own fashioning.
He laid the practical foundation of digital circuits by noting the applicability of boolean algebra to circuit design. Electronic devices and computers are descendants of his work. After a brief hiatus to work on mathematical biology and cryptography he laid the foundation to the internet with his work on Communications/Information theory and contributions to sampling. His work on information theory is also vital in machine learning, Natural language parsing, compression and more; it finds utility in quantum physics and controversy in gravitational physics. He also had some of the earliest working examples of wearable computing, algorithmic trading, and artificial intelligence.
Arguably, mores so than any scientist of recent times, there is not a person whose work more thoroughly infuses and touches our lives than Claude Shannon.
I don't get why geniuses need to be sung as if it's a popularity contest. It's virtually impossible to do information theory without stumbling on Shannon's theorems just like it's not possible to do physics without Dirac. Those who need to know, do know.
They need to be sung because they can motivate people like me who read their stories in isolation and proceed to cultivate an interest in science. The sung heroes shape the tide of the collective imagination.
There is no need for affectations of wisdom; in an economy of attention, merit just as popularity is a component in the vector of notability. Seeking to not acknowledge these things in the name of purity only polarizes and does no one any good.
I nominate Emmy Noether, whose work on the relationship between mathematical symmetry and conservation laws is still the heart of theoretical physics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
Hers is a remarkable story indeed.