No label defined (Q4524296)

When the late Claude Shannon laid down the foundations of a mathematical theory of communication, now called information theory, he was unaware of the deep influence that his theory would have on the development of ergodic theory and, more generally, on dynamical systems theory. It is precisely the latter development which is described in this lucid and informative historical overview, due to one of the main contributors. The Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy of a measure preserving transformation was introduced in the late fifties, a decade after the publication of Shannon's seminal work. A major breakthrough took place in 1969 when D. S. Ornstein proved his isomorphism theorem on Bernoulli shifts of the same entropy. This and subsequent developments are covered in the present paper up to extensions of entropy theory to topological and symbolic dynamics. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0947.00008].