TechFlow News, March 19: According to Caixin.com, the Turing Award—often dubbed the “Nobel Prize of Computing”—has been awarded to Charles H. Bennett, an IBM Fellow in the United States, and Gilles Brassard, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the University of Montreal in Canada. Widely regarded as the founding figures of quantum information science, their most renowned achievement—the BB84 protocol—is the world’s first quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol, marking the birth of quantum cryptography.
As quantum computing advances rapidly, traditional public-key encryption systems face severe challenges. Quantum communication (QKD) and post-quantum cryptography (PQC) have thus emerged as the two core pathways for securing future digital communications. Bennett and Brassard’s collaboration began in 1979; reportedly, Brassard explained to Bennett an idea at the time—using quantum mechanics to create “unforgeable banknotes.”
