Biography

Artur Ekert studied physics at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and at the University of Oxford. Between 1987 and 1991 he was a D.Phil. student at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. In his doctoral thesis (Oxford, 1991) he showed how quantum entanglement and non-locality can be used to distribute cryptographic keys with perfect security.
In 1991 he was elected a Junior Research Fellow and subsequently (1994) a Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. At the time he established the first research group in quantum cryptography and computation, based in the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford. Subsequently it evolved into the Centre for Quantum Computation, now based at DAMTP in Cambridge. Between 1993 and 2000 he held a position of the Royal Society Howe Fellow. In 1998 he was appointed a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow and Tutor in Physics at Keble College, Oxford. From 2002 until early 2007 he was the Leigh-Trapnell Professor of Quantum Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge University and a Professorial Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Since 2007 he has been a Professor of Quantum Physics at the Mathematical Institute, Oxford University, and a Lee Kong Chian Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore. For his discovery of quantum cryptography he was awarded the 1995 Maxwell Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics and the 2007 Hughes Medal by the Royal Society. He is also a co-recipient of the 2004 European Union Descartes Prize. He has worked with and advised several companies and government agencies.
Artur Ekert's research extends over most aspects of information processing in quantum-mechanical systems, with a focus on quantum cryptography and quantum computation. He has made a number of pioneering contributions to both theoretical aspects of quantum computation and proposals for its experimental realisations. His other notable contribution includes his work on quantum state swapping, optimal quantum state estimation and quantum state transfer. He is also known for his work on connections between the notion of mathematical proofs and the laws of physics and his semi-popular writing on the history of science.

Abstract

Human desire to communicate secretly is at least as old as writing itself and goes back to the beginnings of our civilisation. Over the centuries many ingenious methods of secret communication have been developed, only to be matched by the ingenuity of code-breakers. As a result, the quest for a perfect, unbreakable, cipher, had been declared a futile pursuit. That is, until recently! Recent research shows that the security of communication can be guaranteed using peculiar "non local correlations". Such correlations are typically found in the behaviour of quantum particles, and the work builds on schemes that I and others invented decades ago to do quantum cryptography - adding a powerful twist that we hadn't anticipated. By including a mathematical measure known as a 'Bell inequality' that detects non-local correlations, these newer cryptography schemes make a seemingly insane scenario possible - devices of unknown or dubious provenance, even those that are manufactured by our enemies, can be safely used for secure communication, including key distribution. This is a truly remarkable feat, also referred to as "device independent cryptography". All that is needed to implement this bizarre and powerful form of cryptography is a loophole-free test of a Bell's inequality. It is on the edge of being technologically feasible. I will provide a brief overview of the intriguing connections between Bell's inequality and cryptography and describe how studies of quantum entanglement and the foundations of quantum theory influence the way we may soon protect information.