Betty Shannon (née Mary Elizabeth Moore) (April 14, 1922 – May 1, 2017) was a mathematician and the main research collaborator of

Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts Inst ...

. Betty inspired and assisted Claude in building some of his most famous inventions.

Life

Shannon was born on April 14, 1922 in New York City to Vilma Ujlaky Moore and James E. Moore. She was awarded a full scholarship to the

New Jersey College for Women Douglass Residential College, is an undergraduate, non degree granting higher education program of Rutgers University-New Brunswick for women. It succeeded the liberal arts degree-granting Douglass College after it was merged with the other und ...

, where she graduated

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

after studying mathematics. She worked as a numerical analyst at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...

, where as a computer she supported work on microwaves, and then on radar. She published her own research on "Composing Music by a Stochastic Process"; an "exceptional" accomplishment in an era when it was a "significant and unusual achievement for a woman to get her name on a research report". While at Bell Labs she met the shy and insular

. Claude "didn’t have much patience with people who weren’t as smart as he was" and the two of them got on well. In 1948 he asked her on a date and they ended up dining each night together; they were married in 1949. In addition to her research, Shannon was a member of the Weavers' Guild of Boston, served as Dean of the Guild from 1976 to 1978 and received the Guild's Distinguished Achievement Award. Shannon had three children, Robert James Shannon, Andrew Moore Shannon, and Margarita Shannon, and raised their family in

Winchester, Massachusetts Winchester is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, located 8.2 miles (13.2 km) north of downtown Boston as part of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. It is also one of the wealthiest municipalities in Massachusetts. The population ...

. Her oldest son, Robert Shannon, died in 1998 at the age of 45. Betty died on May 1, 2017 at her home at Brookhaven in

Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, and was firs ...

References

1922 births 2017 deaths American mathematicians People from New York City {{US-mathematician-stub