Breakthrough Price | Montreal researcher Gilles Brassard honored

Cryptographer Gilles Brassard, from the University of Montreal, received a prestigious scientific prize on Thursday. The Breakthrough Prize recognizes his work in quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation

Mathieu Perreault
The Press

San Juan Beach

Mr. Brassard shares his prize with three other specialists in quantum physics. It is a field of physics that studies and uses the particular behavior of atoms and elementary particles. The other three winners are long-time collaborators. One of them is physicist Charles Bennett, who works for IBM in the United States. “We met at a conference in Puerto Rico in 1979,” says Bennett. He had presented on a theoretical concept in cryptography, an Oracle database accessible to all, but impossible to modify. I had proposed a similar communication which had been refused. We chatted on the beach and I told him about the ideas of a former college friend, Stephen Wiesner, about an impossible-to-counterfeit digital currency. This led us in 1984 to propose the first quantum cryptography protocol. »

The Nobel?

In 2018, Mr. Brassard and Mr. Bennett received the Wolf Prize in Physics, awarded by an Israeli foundation. As it is the most prestigious award in the field after the Nobel, the articles at the time mentioned its attribution to the duo of researchers. Do they expect to receive the Nobel before they retire? “The Nobel is in ten days, so I won’t stop breathing,” says Mr. Brassard. Half of the recipients of the Wolf in Physics were awarded the Nobel soon after. In our case, it has already been four years. Mr. Bennett for his part lamented that at most three people can receive a Nobel Prize in a discipline each year. “It’s not suited to today’s science, which is done in teams. Mr. Brassard is 67 years old and started university at the age of 13.

quantum cryptography

Quantum cryptography is more secure than classical cryptography, which guarantees the security of communications and transactions using very complicated mathematical problems to solve. But it has not yet established itself in commerce. “With quantum cryptography, you know immediately if you’ve been spied on, because observing a photon changes it,” says Bennett. But there hasn’t been much commercial success in quantum cryptography yet. »

China ahead

The most advanced country in the world in quantum cryptography is China, according to Mr. Brassard. “They have made a quantum cryptography backbone that goes from Shanghai to Beijing and they are experimenting with quantum cryptography with a satellite. Europe is also thinking about it, but in North America, it’s not taken seriously. The problem is that when we will have quantum computers, we will be able to decipher everything that has been done in the past with classical cryptography. Our enemies store all the information on the internet and will be able to read all the secrets when the quantum computer becomes a reality. »

quantum teleportation

Charles Bennett is responsible for the use of the term “teleportation”, which he regrets. “It strikes the imagination, but it gives the false impression that we will be able to teleport thanks to our invention, says Mr. Bennett. This is not the case, quantum teleportation will instead be used to communicate between quantum computers without going through optical fiber. It will avoid the problems of fiber optics, where there are losses when you exceed a few hundred kilometers. »

Facebook and Google

The five Breakthrough Awards were created in 2012 by tech entrepreneurs, including founders of Facebook and Google. Each award is tied to a $3 million scholarship. “The Wolf Prize is more prestigious, but for some reason I don’t understand, there’s been a lot more media interest in the Breakthrough Prize,” says Brassard.