Bennett and Brassard win Turing Award for quantum data security research

The Association for Computing Machinery has presented the A.M. Turing Award to APS member Charles H. Bennett and his research partner, Gilles Brassard. Popularly considered the “Nobel Prize of computer science,” the Turing Award includes a prize of $1 million.

Bennett is a researcher at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, while Brassard is a computer science faculty member at the University of Montreal. Their research partnership began in the late 1970s, when quantum computing research was in its infancy. In 1984, the pair released their BB84 protocol, the basis for their approach to utilizing quantum computing to secure data. Their work on quantum key cryptography secures computing data in a way that even eventual quantum computers, with their exponentially faster processing, will not be able to break.

Bennett has deep professional ties to the American Physical Society. He has served on the APS Council of Representatives, chaired the Division of Quantum Information (among active memberships in numerous other units), and was elected to APS Fellow in 1998. He currently sits on the Society’s Ethics Committee. In 2022, Bennett authored an APS News opinion piece on confronting misinformation in the sciences.

This recognition is a powerful reminder that major advances often grow from sustained collaboration across disciplines,” said APS CEO Jonathan Bagger. “Charles Bennett’s work helped open new possibilities at the intersection of physics and computing, and it reflects the kind of curiosity, collaboration, and international exchange that continue to move science forward.

Each year, APS presents the Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett Award in Quantum Computing for recent outstanding contributions in quantum information science.

“We are proud to celebrate Charles Bennett as a member of the APS community and as one of the pioneers of quantum information science,” said APS President Brad Marston. “His partnership with Gilles Brassard shows what is possible when researchers across disciplines and across borders build new ideas together. It is exactly the kind of connection-driven science that strengthens our global scientific community.”

Outside his APS roles, Bennett is an IBM Fellow, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards.