The Association for Computing Machinery has officially awarded the 2025 A.M. Turing Award to Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard. The prestigious honor recognizes their foundational role in establishing quantum information science and transforming secure communication. Often described as the “Nobel Prize in Computing,” the award carries a $1 million prize with financial support provided by Google.
Named after Alan Turing, the British mathematician who formulated the mathematical basis of computing, the 2025 Turing Award represents the highest honor in computer science. The announcement marks a historic milestone, as it is the first time the award has recognized advancements rooted in quantum physics.
Bennett, an 82-year-old physicist at IBM Research in New York, and Brassard, a 70-year-old computer scientist at the University of Montreal, possess seemingly unrelated backgrounds. However, by incorporating quantum principles into computational models, their collaboration successfully bridged two previously distinct disciplines.
The Origins of Quantum Cryptography
Before the mid-1990s, quantum information science was a relatively small community. Bennett and Brassard stood as some of the field’s earliest and most vocal advocates. Their partnership traces back to a serendipitous meeting at a 1979 academic conference in Puerto Rico. During a swimming break, Bennett approached Brassard with a theoretical concept for creating a banknote that would be physically impossible to counterfeit. That conversation sparked a long-lasting partnership focused on the behavior of matter particles.
In 1984, drawing on insights from their late collaborator Stephen Wiesner, the duo published “Quantum Cryptography: Public Key Distribution and Coin Tossing.” This publication formally introduced the BB84 protocol. As the world’s first quantum key distribution scheme, the BB84 protocol demonstrated that encryption could be secured by the fundamental laws of physics rather than standard computational assumptions.
Five years later, Bennett and his team successfully brought this theory to life. Using a custom-built apparatus, they experimentally demonstrated the BB84 protocol in 1989. This vital achievement propelled quantum cryptography from a theoretical concept into practical reality, laying the essential groundwork for modern information security.
Breakthroughs in Quantum Teleportation
Beyond revolutionizing cryptography, the duo significantly reshaped the theoretical boundaries of computing itself. In 1993, working alongside collaborators Claude Crépeau, Richard Jozsa, Asher Peres, and William K. Wootters, the two pioneers introduced the concept of quantum teleportation.
Their research detailed how an arbitrary quantum state could be successfully transmitted between distant parties. This process relies on both classical communication and quantum entanglement—the surprisingly correlated behavior of particles that are too far apart to influence one another. The researchers emphasized that quantum teleportation involves no transfer of matter or energy; only the particle’s state is transferred.
Before their discovery, entanglement was widely viewed by scientists as a philosophical curiosity. Bennett and Brassard proved it could serve as a highly practical resource. Their foundational insights into teleportation and entanglement distillation now underpin global efforts to build secure quantum networks and large-scale quantum computing systems. The experimental verification of these phenomena was later recognized by the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Global Impact and Industry Recognition
The scientific community has widely praised the decision to honor quantum research with computing’s highest prize. Association for Computing Machinery President Yannis Ioannidis highlighted the profound significance of the duo’s achievements.
“Bennett and Brassard fundamentally changed our understanding of information itself,” Ioannidis stated. “Their insights expanded the boundaries of computing and set in motion decades of discovery across disciplines. The global momentum behind quantum technologies today underscores the enduring importance of their contributions.”
Experts agree that their work established an entirely new paradigm. Stephanie Wehner, a quantum communications researcher at the Delft University of Technology, emphasized the unique nature of their discoveries. Wehner stated that Bennett and Brassard played a massive part in establishing the foundations of quantum information, noting that scientists can do things with it that simply do not have a classical analogue.
Today, their foundational research continues to influence algorithm design, computational complexity, interactive proofs, and mathematical physics.
