Tribute to Shannon

Claude Shannon died on 24 February 2001 of the after-effects of Alzheimer disease. With him, one of the greatest scientific minds of the century, and even of all times, disappears. His work exercised a deep influence, although often misknown, in the communication techniques hence in the world where we are living, as well as in the thoughts of the XX century. I shall try, after having evoked the carrier and work of Shannon, to show in what his approach was extraordinarily innovative and also, which is more risky, to bring out promises for the future that this work contains. The use I make of the first person should be understood as intended to claim a deliberate subjectivity. I do not indeed pretend to evoke all facets of Shannon’s genius but only those which my experience and my reflection enabled me, I hope, to grasp. Beyond the anecdotes and picturesque details I chose mainly to evoke the creator of information theory. Shannon’s papers were collected by N.J.A. Sloane and A.D. Wyner [1]. For convenience, I shall cite Shannon’s works by reference to this collection. My main source of historic information, except for the few biographic data contained in [1], is the excellent and monumental doctoral thesis of Jérôme Ségal [2].