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Dr. Shannon's Master's thesis [Sha40] and related publication in Transactions, American Institute of Electrical Engineers [Sha38] won him the Alfred Noble Prize along with fame and renown. The thesis has often been described as the greatest Master's thesis of all time; many feel that this may in fact understate the case.

At MIT, he was idolized by both the students and faculty. Golomb et al. [GBC⁺02], reports that Shannon was “somewhat inner‐directed and shy, but very easy to talk to after the initial connection had been made.”

In his spare time, Shannon built several items including Thrifty Roman numerical Backward‐looking Computer (THROBAC) which was actually a calculator that performed all the arithmetic operations in the Roman numerical system. He also built Theseus, a mechanical mouse in 1950. Controlled by a relay circuit, the mouse moved around a maze until it found the exit. Then, having been through the maze, the mouse, placed anywhere it had been before, would go directly to the exit. Placed in an unvisited locale, the mouse would search for a known position then proceed to the exit, adding the new knowledge to its memory.

Shannon was the first to develop computerized chess machines and kept several in his house. He built a “mind‐reading” machine that played the old game of penny‐watching. As juggling was one of his obsessions, he built several juggling machines and worked hard on mathematical models of juggling. He was famous for riding his unicycle along the corridors at Bell Laboratories juggling all the while. On the more practical side, Shannon was also interested in portfolio management and the stock market which he connected to information theory, treating it as a noisy channel.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Shannon received umpteen awards, honors, prizes, honorary degrees, and invitations. In the end, it all became too much, and he “dropped out.” To quote Waldrop [Wal01] “he turned down almost all the endless invitations to lecture or to give newspaper interviews. He didn't want to be a celebrity. He likewise quit responding to much of his mail. Correspondence from major figures in science and government ended up forgotten and unanswered in a file folder he labeled ‘Letters I've procrastinated too long on.’.” Dr. Shannon did attend one other Shannon lecture in Brighton, England, in 1985 (delivered by Golomb), where the shy genius created quite a stir. As Robert McEleice recalls (see [Hor90]): “It was as if Newton had showed up at a physics conference.”