The John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and their Applications (short form: Bell Prize) was established in 2009, funded and managed by the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) in the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science. Named after John Stewart Bell (the physicist behind Bell's theorem, a theorem whose experimental vindication led to a Nobel Prize), it is generally awarded every second year, for significant contributions relating to the foundations of quantum mechanics and to the applications of these principles – this covers, but is not limited to, quantum information theory, quantum computation, quantum foundations, quantum cryptography and quantum control. The selection committee has included Gilles Brassard, Peter Zoller, Alain Aspect, John Preskill, and Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain, in addition to previous winners Sandu Popescu, Michel Devoret and Nicolas Gisin.
Awarded Prizes Year Medalists Affiliation Reason2009Nicolas GisinProfessor of Physics at the Université de GenèveFor his theoretical and experimental work on quantum nonlocality, quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation.2011Sandu PopescuProfessor of Physics at the University of Bristol, UKFor discoveries of stronger-than-quantum no-signaling correlations, and the application of quantum theory to thermodynamics.2013Michel Devoret and Robert J. SchoelkopfProfessors of Applied Physics at Yale University, USAFor their work on entangling superconducting qubits and microwave photons, and their application to quantum information processing.2015Rainer BlattProfessor of Experimental Physics at University of Innsbruck, and director of Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Innsbruck, AustriaFor his works on quantum information processing with trapped ions.2017Ronald Hanson, Sae Woo Nam, and Anton ZeilingerDelft University of Technology, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and University of Vienna respectivelyFor "their groups’ experiments simultaneously closing the detection and locality loopholes in a violation of Bell's Inequalities".2019Juan Ignacio Cirac and Peter ZollerMax Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and University of Innsbruck with IQOQI respectivelyFor "groundbreaking proposals in quantum optics and atomic physics on how to engineer quantum systems . . . and using Projected Entangled Pair States for the theoretical study of quantum many body systems".2021John M. MartinisUniversity of California, Santa BarbaraFor innovations in designing and controlling superconducting devices2024John PreskillProfessor of Theoretical Physics, California Institute of TechnologyFor "developments at the interface of efficient learning and processing of quantum information in quantum computation, and following upon long standing intellectual leadership in near-term quantum computing."2026Antoine Browaeys, Mikhail Lukin, and Mark SaffmanCNRS and Université Paris-Saclay, Harvard University, and University of Wisconsin - Madison, respectivelyFor "pioneering contributions to quantum simulation and quantum computing with neutral atoms in optical tweezer arrays, including the development of large-scale programmable arrays for scalable quantum computation"
See also List of physics awards
References
External links