World-leaders in Cryptography: Gilles Brassard
Gilles has been a full Professor at the Université de Montréal for more than 45 years. He laid the foundations of quantum cryptography at a time when no one could have predicted that the quantum information revolution would usher in a multi-billion-dollar industry, much less that the United Nations would proclaim 2025 to be the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. He is also among the inventors of quantum teleportation, which is one of the most fundamental pillars of the theory of quantum information. In addition to this, his research focuses on areas of classical cryptography, privacy amplification, quantum entanglement distillation, quantum pseudo-telepathy, the classical simulation of quantum entanglement, amplitude amplification and he discovered the first lower bound on the power of quantum computers. Currently, his main interest lies in the foundations of quantum theory. In 1996, he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada. In 2000, he won the Prix Marie-Victorin - the highest scientific award of the government of Quebec - and in 2006, he was elected as a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research. In 2009, Gille was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, and in 2011 the Killam Prize in Natural Sciences, which are Canada's highest scientific honours. In 2013, Gilles was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. He was named as an Officer in the Order of Canada in 2013 and in the Ordre national du Québec in 2017. In 2018, he became the first Canadian to receive the Wolf Prize in Physics, which is considered second only to the Nobel Prize for Physics. In 2019, he received the Micius Quantum Prize and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences. In 2023, he was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics - the world’s largest science prize. Furthermore, he has been granted honorary doctorates including from ETH Zürich, and the University of Ottawa.
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