2025 ACM A.M. Turing Award Honors Quantum Pioneers
Recipients: Charles H. Bennett & Gilles Brassard
ACM has named Charles H. Bennett (IBM Research) and Gilles Brassard (Université de Montréal) as the recipients of the 2025 A.M. Turing Award. Often called the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” the award includes a $1 million prize for their foundational contributions to Quantum Information Science.
Key Breakthroughs
- BB84 Protocol (1984): The first practical protocol for quantum cryptography. It allows two parties to establish secret keys with security guaranteed by the laws of physics rather than mathematical assumptions.
- Quantum Teleportation (1993): Demonstrated how an arbitrary quantum state can be transmitted between distant parties using entanglement and classical communication.
- Entanglement Distillation (1996): Created methods to strengthen “imperfect” entanglement, a vital step for building scalable quantum networks and a future quantum internet.
Why It Matters
As traditional public-key cryptography becomes vulnerable to future quantum computers, the work of Bennett and Brassard provides the framework for information-theoretic security. Their research bridged physics and computer science, redefining how we process and transmit information in the 21st century.
References
[1]
C. H. Bennett and G. Brassard, “Quantum cryptography: Public key distribution and coin tossing,”
Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 560, pp. 7–11, Oct. 2014,
doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2014.05.025.
[2]
“A.M. Turing Award,” Acm.org, 2025.
https://amturing.acm.org/ (accessed Mar. 20, 2026).