Page "Data compression" Paragraph 15

The theoretical background of compression is provided by information theory ( which is closely related to algorithmic information theory ) for lossless compression, and by rate – distortion theory for lossy compression.

These fields of study were essentially created by Claude Shannon, who published fundamental papers on the topic in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Coding theory is also related.

The idea of data compression is deeply connected with statistical inference.