By: Jon Farrow
8 May, 2019
CIFAR fellows awarded 2019 Micius Quantum Prize
May 8, 2019
Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard, fellows in CIFAR’s Quantum Information Science program, were jointly awarded a 2019 Micius Quantum Prize for “their inventions of quantum key distribution, quantum teleportation, and entanglement purification.”
The prize recognizes significant advances in the field of quantum communications, quantum simulation, quantum computation, and quantum metrology. Bennett and Brassard were honoured for several theoretical breakthroughs. In 1984, they developed a practical system of quantum cryptography, allowing secure communication between parties who share no secret information initially, based on the uncertainty principle instead of on usual computational assumptions such as the difficulty of factoring. In 1993, the two fellows, in collaboration with others, discovered quantum teleportation. Later, Bennett helped found the quantitative theory of entanglement, and introduced several techniques for faithful transmission of classical and quantum information through noisy channels.
(Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard)
Several other Micius Quantum Prize laureates have affiliations with CIFAR’s Quantum Information Science program. Peter Shor, who was awarded a 2018 Quantum Prize, is a member of the program’s Advisory Council. David Wineland, a 2018 laureate, and Artur Ekert, a 2019 laureate, were also members of that council.
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