The sampling theorem has a very interesting history which goes back well before Shannon. Numerical analysts were concerned about interpolating tables of functions and the first one to prove a version of the sampling theorem was Whittaker in England in 1915. Harry Nyquist at Bell Labs came up with the Nyqvist criterion, namely that a function that has a maximum frequency $$F_N$$​ could be sampled at $$2F_N$$. In the Soviet Union, Kotelnikov proved another version of the sampling theorem. Whittaker's son further proved results on the sampling theorem. Then Herbert Raabe in Berlin wrote his PhD thesis about the sampling theorem but, wrong time wrong city, he got no credit for it. Denis Gabor worked on a version of the sampling theorem in the mid-1940s. Then Claude Shannon, the inventor of information theory, wrote a beautiful paper where the sampling theorem appears in the form that we use today. Last but not least, in 1949 Someya in Japan also independently proved the sampling theorem.

For a more in-depth treatment of sampling and interpolation with a similar perspective, we recommend Chapter 5, ‘’Sampling and Interpolation’’, of the “ Foundations of Signal Processing ’’ book by Vetterli, Kovacevic and Goyal.

For the original version of the Shannon sampling theorem, see this Wikipedia entry and look at the links provided in the page to access the original paper from 1948, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" . With respect to the latter, it is probably the most important paper written about communications and it is both profound and readable, so truly a masterpiece!