I'm trying to find a quote I read about this paper once. To paraphrase, not only did this paper create a new field of academic inquiry, it answered most of that new field's interesting questions, too.
> With Shannon’s startling ideas on information, it was one of the rare moments in history, an academic would later point out, “where somebody founded a field, stated all the major results, and proved most of them all pretty much at once.”
It is attributed to a documentary on Claude Shannon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2Whj_nL-x8