I · The foundations
Claude Shannon
1916–2001
Mathematician at Bell Labs · MIT
Gave us
Information theory. The bit. Channel capacity. The proof that a digital signal can be transmitted over a noisy channel with arbitrarily small error if you stay below the channel capacity.
The story
A 1948 paper, a single thinker, an entire field. Shannon also juggled, rode unicycles down Bell Labs hallways, and built mechanical chess-playing machines and a coin-tossing robot. Famously private, almost reclusive in his later years.
"Information is the resolution of uncertainty."
One more thing
Could juggle while riding a unicycle. The combination is documented.