When I interviewed Shannon at his home in Winchester, Mass., he said he was disappointed that Scientific American had never published his poem.

In 1989 I found Shannon's poem and letter to Flanagan in an archive at Scientific American when I was researching Shannon for a profile (published in January 1990). I am still working on the juggling paper. You may disagree with both of these, but I enclose 'A Rubric on Rubik Cubics' for you. I have come to two conclusions recently:Ģ) Scientific American should have a poetry column. You probably think I have been fritterin', I say fitterin', away my time while my juggling paper is languishing on the shelf. (Shannon once told me, proudly, that 'financial value, or value to the world,' never motivated him and that he had 'spent lots of time on totally useless problems.') Here is the poem's provenance: In a letter dated December 1, 1981, Shannon wrote to Dennis Flanagan, then editor of Scientific American, concerning an article that Shannon was supposed to be writing about the physics of juggling. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Shannon's death, I'm publishing his poem, 'A Rubric on Rubik Cubics,' which captures Shannon's legendary playfulness.

He was also an avid juggler, unicyclist, designer of machines that play chess and other games, and-most surprising of all-a poet. Shannon was not only the creator of information theory, which provides the mathematical framework that makes digital communications possible (and which I discussed in a recent post). There may be no scientist more obscure relative to his immense accomplishments than Claude Elwood Shannon, who died just over a decade ago, on February 24, 2001, at the age of 84.

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