“Acceptance Speech” Frontiers of Knowledge Award 2020 in Basic Sciences

Acceptance speech by Charles H. Bennett, winner of the 2020 Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences, who was honored alongside Gilles Brassard and Peter Shor for their fundamental contributions to quantum computation and communication. His research with Brassard led to the BB84 protocol, which uses the properties of quantum physics to detect potential interception attempts during cryptographic key exchange, laying the foundations for a new generation of secure communication systems.

Bennett reflects on the unique properties of quantum information, which, unlike classical information, cannot be perfectly copied when its state is unknown. He compares this characteristic to dreams, whose experiences cannot be fully reproduced or shared, to illustrate the nature of quantum phenomena. This distinctive property made it possible to explore new ways of protecting communications and opened up a field of research connecting fundamental physics with computer science.