Communications of the ACM

Gilles Brassard, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at Université de Montréal, and Charles Bennett of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, are sharing the Wolf Prize in Physics, awarded by the eponymous Israeli foundation for their contribution to the creation and development of quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation. Brassard is the first Canadian to receive this prize.

Reuven Rivlin, the president of the state of Israel, will present the award to them at a ceremony in Jerusalem later this month.

Holder of the Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information, Brassard has raised cryptography to unprecedented heights. He is also one of the pioneers in the application of quantum physics to information processing. He continues to work on quantum computing, cryptography, both traditional and quantum, the foundations of quantum mechanics, and the protection of privacy.

During his career, Brassard has received numerous honours, including the Gerhard-Herzberg Canada Gold Medal from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Killam Prize in Natural Sciences, the Lifetime Achievement in Computer Science Award from the Canadian Association of Computer Science, and was named a Fellow of the Royal Society, and an Officer of the Order of Canada and of the Ordre national du Québec.

About the Wolf Prize

Since 1978, five Wolf prizes have been awarded each year, four in the fields of science and one in the arts. These awards are bestowed on men and women recognized for their individual contributions to "achievements for humanity and for friendly relations between peoples, regardless of nationality, race, colour, religion, gender or political outlook." Over the course of 40 years, some 330 eminent scientists and artists from 45 countries, including Israel, have received Wolf prizes. Of that number, more than 30 winners received a Nobel prize.