Wizards don't need encyclopedias

Claude [Shannon]’s gifts were of the Einsteinian variety: a strong intuitive feel for the dimensions of a problem, with less of a concern for the step-by-step details. As he put it, “I think I’m more visual than symbolic. I try to get a feeling of what’s going on. Equations come later.” Like Einstein, he needed a sounding board, a role that [his wife] Betty played perfectly. His colleague David Slepian said, “He didn’t know math very deeply. But he could invent whatever he needed.”

(link) <-- good book


See also Fortune's Formula.