Mathematics
The Huffman Coding Algorithm for Data Compression
Quick fact
Huffman coding produces the most efficient prefix code possible for a given set of symbol frequencies, and it is the algorithm behind many compression tools like ZIP and GZIP. It was invented by David A. Huffman in 1952 while he was a graduate student at MIT.
Why this is interesting
Why is it that the letter 'e' appears as a short beep in Morse code, but 'z' as a long one? Could there be a mathematically perfect way to minimize the average length of such codes?