Boiledbeans

Drama! Intrigue! Geekiness!

September 1, 2011

What, you too? Part 1

srikanth @ 11:59 pm, GMT +0000 ( 1314921553 ) Play

A was a Dutch cryptographer who created a set of 6 rules for a certain kind of system. The 2nd of his set of 6 remained famous and relevant and was named after him.

B was an American mathematician, cryptographer, electrical engineer and all-round genius who, almost 100 years after A, formulated a variant of the same principle. This was in turn, named after A although they both largely mean the same! B was, of course, an incredibly prolific genius whose work, many believe, created the field of information theory and his papers are considered the most important papers of the 20th century. (consequently, B has featured on Boiledbeans _many_ times. So this is not a dupe :P)

Another interesting (unrelated) coincidence around B  was with C. B proved a certain theorem in 1949 that is fundamental to the world of information theory. Unbeknownst to B, C - who was a Swedish-born American – had pretty much proved the same thing almost 20 years before. Funnily enough, almost half-a-dozen people independently proved this over time. But, by and large, the theorem is credit to both B and C.

Identify A, B and C for 1 point. No part points. Pseudo-bonus points for naming the set of 6 rules, the maxim, and the theorem :)

 

 

Cracked by: grey_matters , username , Goyal , Sumanth Patlolla , buk , jowens , byslexia , KK , Raghuvansh , Siddarth Pai , Rogi , Thejas V R , Dibyo , shrik , Shwetha Maiya , Aditya S , badideabear , anurag , Rahulk , Bharath , Wm , rickde , Martin , amarendra , raklodramA , Ananth , Manish Achuth and Anjul

Answer:
A – Auguste Kerckhoffs
B – Claude Shanon
C – Harry Nyquist

Points assigned by AutoRaja. Review by lazy humans pending.
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