Résumé
Artur Konrad Ekert is the Leigh Trapnell Professor of Quantum Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), University of Cambridge and a Professorial Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He is also a Distinguished Professor at the National University of Singapore. Ekert is one of the pioneers of quantum cryptography. In his doctoral thesis (Oxford, 1991) he showed how quantum entanglement and non-locality can be used to distribute cryptographic keys with perfect security. It continues to attract significant attention from industry and government agencies. For his discovery of quantum cryptography he was awarded the 1995 Maxwell Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics. He is also a co-recipient of the 2004 European Union Descartes Prize. Artur Ekert has worked with and advised several companies and government agencies and has made a number of contributions to quantum information science. Since 1992 he has been in charge of the Quantum Computation and Cryptography Research group which has evolved into the Centre for Quantum Computation, now based at DAMTP in Cambridge.
- Since 2002 Leigh Trapnell Professor of Quantum Physics, University of Cambridge, and a Professorial Fellow of King's College Cambridge.
- 1998-2002 Fellow and Tutor in Physics at Keble College Oxford and a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford.
- 1993-2000 Royal Society Howe Fellow.
- 1991-1998 Junior Research Fellow and then a Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford.
- 1987-1991 D.Phil. (Ph.D.) student, Wolfson College, Oxford
Awards and Prizes
- The 1995 Maxwell Medal and Prize. It is a Principal Award within the gift of the Council of the Institute of Physics awarded to young researchers for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics. The Citation:
"...for his pioneering work in quantum cryptography, in which fundamental quantum properties of entangled states are combined with information theory to provide absolute secure quantum systems. His 1991 paper showed how efforts in this field could go from speculative ideas to realizable physics and triggered an explosion of effort worldwide..."
- The 2004 European Union Descartes Prize. It is awarded to teams of researchers who have achieved outstanding scientific or technological results through collaborative research in any field of science, including the economic, social science and humanities.