Бажанов Валентин Александрович

The paper describes and compares the life trajectories of two prominent scien-tists, V. I. Shestakov and C. Shannon. In the 1930s, they both independently discovered relay and switching circuits that opened the way towards technical applications of logic and produced the conceptual precursors of modern information technologies. Later, Shannon helped launch several other new directions in science and became very famous, while Shestakov continued to develop his relay-switching circuits and died virtually unknown.