Wolf Prize for Quantum Pioneers

Posted by Chad Orzel on February 2, 2010
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Congratulations to Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for winning the 2010 Wolf Prize in Phyiscs:

The 2010 Wolf Prize in Physics will be shared by Prof. John F. Clauser of the US; Prof. Alain Aspect of France’s École Normale Supérieure de Cachan; and Prof. Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna. The jury in this field praised them “for their fundamental conceptual and experimental contributions to the foundations of quantum physics, specifically an increasingly sophisticated series of tests of Bell’s inequalities, or extensions thereof, using entangled quantum states.”

All three have made fine and distinguished careers in the testing of odd quantum effects, and their work has had a deep impact on the way we understand our universe. I’ve never met Clauser, but Aspect is also a nice guy, and Zeilinger has an excellent reputation as well, which is a nice bonus.

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Comments

  1. #1 bramki obrotowe
    February 2, 2010

    Hurray for the winners!

  2. #2 Matt Leifer
    February 2, 2010

    Congratulations to the winners! Good to see Clauser included because he is often erroneously written out of the history of Bell experiments. They say that the Wolf Prize is a good predictor of the Nobel, but I think it is unlikely we will see a Nobel for this given that Bell is no longer with us.

  3. #3 Thony C.
    February 2, 2010

    Zeilinger is regarded as “the” German language expert for quantum physics.

  4. #4 Chad Orzel
    February 2, 2010

    Zeilinger’s English is pretty good, so I’d consider him an expert in that language as well.

    I don’t see why Bell’s death would rule out a Nobel for tests of Bell’s inequality (among other things). It might rule out a Nobel for theoretical developments in that subfield, but experiments are a different ballgame.