There's been a steady trickle of reports of innovations in quantum computing, including one we

recently reported on in Quanta that seemed to suggest that the era of these really, really powerful,

though somewhat limited machines, could be on the way. And one of the things that they could potentially do that traditional computers can't

is crack today's best digital security methods.

These methods are built mathematically on hard problems, problems that quantum computers

are well suited to solve, potentially.

And this means that we need other strategies for securing information and communication.

And that drives us right back into the world of quantum mechanics that makes quantum computing

possible in the first place.

Welcome to the Quanta podcast where we explore the frontiers of fundamental science and math.

I'm Samir Patel, editor-in-chief of Quantum Magazine.

Recently, we reported on the A.M. Turing Award.

It's one of the biggest honors in computer science, and it was given for

foundational work that started decades ago before quantum computers were remotely a thing,

that laid the foundations for the kind of quantum cryptography, quantum-based communication that we

need now. Our computer science writer Ben Brubaker reported on the

award and the work that led to it, and he's here to talk us through it. Welcome back to the show, Ben.

Hello again. So, Ben, what's the big idea? The big idea here is that there's a deep connection

between the laws of quantum physics and the science of

protecting secret information, which is cryptography. And the discovery of that connection was the

subject of this year's Turing Award. Okay, so tell me a little bit about the A.M. Turing Award, to

start with, and who won it this year? Yeah, so it's sometimes called the Nobel Prize of Computer

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