Quantum pioneers Bennett and Brassard receive the Turing Award

Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard are the latest recipients of the ACM A.M. Turing Award for work that helped create quantum information theory beginning with their 1979 collaboration, including the BB84 protocol.

Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard are the latest recipients of the ACM A.M. Turing Award. Their collaboration began after a meeting in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Puerto Rico in 1979. They developed ideas including the BB84 protocol that helped establish quantum information theory. At the time, quantum effects were largely seen as a nuisance for classical computing rather than a resource. Key facts: - Bennett and Brassard met in 1979 and their collaboration produced the BB84 protocol, an early foundation of quantum cryptography. - Their work reframed quantum phenomena such as entanglement and quantum coin-tossing as tools rather than merely sources of noise. - The ACM credited them with fundamentally changing the field’s understanding of information. - Both researchers say their original work did not directly create modern quantum computers; other scientists, including Richard Feynman and David Deutsch, also advanced the idea of quantum computation. - Brassard and Bennett later contributed to concepts such as quantum teleportation, which figures in discussions about future quantum networks. Summary: Their research helped bring computer science into the quantum era by creating foundational concepts for quantum cryptography and information theory. Undetermined at this time.