When I was at MIT, we spent a History of CS class on him. The fact that you can calculate te theoretical limit on info transmitted given a channel's parameters is kinda mind-blowing. Like Einstein figuring our theoretical limit on velocity.

He also wrote one of the most important master theses ever - from his NYT obit - "In what has been described as one of the most important master's theses ever written, he showed how Boolean logic, in which problems can be solved by manipulating just two symbols, 1 and 0, could be carried out automatically with electrical switching circuits. The symbol 1 could be represented by a switch that was turned on; 0 would be a switch that was turned off."