MIT Information Theory Pioneer Claude Shannon Dies REUTERS INDEX: TOP STORIES | INTERNATIONAL | BUSINESS | TECHNOLOGY By REUTERS Filed at 6:55 p.m. ET CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - Professor Emeritus Claude Shannon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, considered the father of modern digital communications and information theory, has died, MIT officials said on Tuesday. Shannon died on Saturday at a Massachusetts nursing home after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, they said. He was 84. A distant relative of Thomas Edison, Shannon was affiliated with Bell Laboratories from 1941 to 1972, during which time he wrote the landmark paper ``A Mathematical Theory of Communication.'' That 1948 paper begins by observing that ``the fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point.'' The information content of a message, Shannon theorized, consists simply of the number of 1s and 0s it takes to transmit it. ``Nobody had come close to this idea before,'' said Robert Gallager, another MIT professor emeritus, who worked with Shannon. ``This was not something somebody else would have done for a very long time.'' Communication engineers adopted the idea and created the technology that led to today's information age. All communication lines today are measured in bits per second, reflecting what Shannon had dubbed ``channel capacity.'' His theory also made it possible to use bits in computer storage for pictures, voice streams and other data. EARNED DOCTORATE IN 1940 After receiving undergraduate degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1936, he came to MIT as a graduate student and received his doctoral degree in 1940.World War. Shannon, a noted cryptographer, worked on secrecy systems at Bell Labs in New Jersey. His team's work on anti-aircraft directors -- devices that observe enemy planes or missiles and calculate the aim of defensive weapons -- became crucial when German rockets were used in the blitz of England. His 1949 paper ``Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems'' is generally credited with transforming cryptography from an art to a science. While at Bell Labs, he met and married Mary Elizabeth Moore. The couple returned to Massachusetts, and Shannon joined MIT's faculty. He had a whimsical side and developed a juggling machine, rocket-powered Frisbees, motorized pogo sticks, a ``mind-reading machine,'' a mechanical mouse that could navigate a maze and a device able to solve the Rubik's Cube puzzle. Among his many awards were the National Medal of Science and the Kyoto Prize for Basic Science. He is survived by his widow, a son and a daughter, two granddaughters, and a sister.