Claude E. Shannon: the 50th anniversary of information theory

Although experts recognized immediately the importance of the ideas addressed in the article "A mathematical theory of communication" by Claude E. Shannon, it was not until the 1970s that their full capacity could be exploited with the advent of integrated circuits, and today's computer and communications equipment would be unimaginable without Shannon's contribution. The 50th anniversary of information theory is an opportunity to briefly present the biography of this man and the development of one of his most fruitful concepts: that of forward error-correction schemes from a pure mathematical curiosity to an important discipline in computer and communications engineering.