Boing-boing posts this brief story and link to video of Claude Shannon's (he of "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" fame) various quirky things, such as the juggling robots [QuickTime file] he built. Creepy-cool.
update: I skipped over much of the text in the first link above, but re-read it later--aside from the interesting video and pictures, the main page hosts some nice personal anecdotes about Shannon from his colleague Arthur Lewbel of MIT. Among other things, there's this:
Claude told me this story. He may have been kidding, but it illustrates both his sense of humor and his delightfully self deprecating nature, and it certainly could be true. The story is that Claude was in the middle of giving a lecture to mathematicians in Princeton, when the door in the back of the room opens, and in walks Albert Einstein. Einstein stands listening for a few minutes, whispers something in the ear of someone in the back of the room, and leaves. At the end of the lecture, Claude hurries to the back of the room to find the person that Einstein had whispered too, to find out what the great man had to say about his work. The answer: Einstein had asked directions to the men’s room.
[via Boing Boing]
Posted by johndan at January 22, 2005 11:13 PM | TrackBack