Prof. Charles H. Bennett - a leading expert in quantum physics and information, doctor honoris causa of the University of Gdańsk, a researcher collaborating with the University of Gdańsk, and an employee of IBM in New York - has been awarded the Turing Award for encryption technology that is theoretically unbreakable.

Prof. Charles H. Bennett was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Gdańsk in 2006. The physicist has been collaborating with the UG for many years: between 2018 and 2023, he was a member of the International Scientific Committee of the ICTQT (International Centre for Theory of Quantum Technologies), and in recent years, he has visited Gdańsk almost every year to deliver lectures at scientific symposia and conferences on quantum information.

The Turing Award, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of computer science, was awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to Prof. Charles H. Bennett and Prof. Gilles Brassard (from the University of Montreal). The quantum cryptography they developed - in the opinion of the award committee – ‘has redefined secure communication and data processing’. Their protocol, known as BB84, demonstrates that any attempt to break or copy a quantum encryption key alters the very behaviour of its components, making replication impossible.

The Turing Award is named after the mathematician and cryptologist Alan Turing. It has been awarded annually since 1966 for outstanding achievements in the field of computer science. It is accompanied by a cash prize of $1 million.