Turing Award Goes to Quantum Cryptography Founders for First Time

The ACM A.M. Turing Award - computing's highest honour - was awarded for the first time to quantum science. Charles H. Bennett (IBM Research) and Gilles Brassard (University of Montreal) share the $1 million prize for their foundational work on quantum information science, including the BB84 quantum key distribution protocol (1984) and quantum teleportation (1993).

Bennett and Brassard invented the quantum-safe cryptographic primitives that are now the backbone of post-quantum defence. Brassard himself noted the urgency of "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks at the award announcement.