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11 Life Lessons From History’s Most Underrated Genius
Insights on work and creativity from the life of mathematician Claude Shannon, the most influential figure you’ve never heard of
By Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni, co-authors of A Mind at Play
For five years, we lived with one of the most brilliant people on the planet.
Sort of.
See, we spent those all-consuming five years writing our biography of American mathematician Claude Shannon, whose work in the 1930s and ’40s earned him the title of “father of the information age.” That’s how long it took us to understand the influence of the most important genius you’ve never heard of, a man whose intellect was on par with that of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton.
During that time, we spent more time with the deceased Claude Shannon than we have with many of our living friends. He became something like the roommate in the spare bedroom of our minds, the guy who was always hanging around and occupying our headspace.
Geniuses have a unique way of engaging with the world, and if you spend enough time examining their habits, you discover the behaviors behind their brilliance. Whether or not we intended it to, understanding Claude Shannon’s life gave us…
