1.1. The International Quantum Communication Award.

The International Quantum Communication Award is an award given every two years since 1996 in the framework of the International Conference on Quantum Communication, Quantum Measurement and Quantum Computer for pioneering contributions in theoretical and experimental physics. The award is presented by a prize committee of Tamagawa University, Tokyo and is endowed with 250,000 yen each, which corresponds to about 1,600 euros.

1.2. Peter W Shor awarded the 1998 International Quantum Communication Award.

In 1998, Peter Shor was awarded the International Quantum Communication Award at the International Conference on Quantum Communication, Measurement and Computing.

He received the award for his ground-breaking contributions to the field of quantum computing, most notably for the development of Shor's algorithm in 1994. This algorithm demonstrated that a quantum computer could efficiently factor large integers, a task that remains practically impossible for classical computers and forms the basis of modern encryption.

2.1. The Rolf Nevanlinna Prize.

The Rolf Nevanlinna Prize in mathematical aspects of information science was established by the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in April 1981. It was decided that the prize should consist of a gold medal and a cash prize similar to the ones associated with the Fields Medal and that one prize should be given at each International Congress of Mathematicians.

One year later, in April 1982, the IMU accepted the offer by the University of Helsinki to finance the prize. The prize was named the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize in honour of Rolf Nevanlinna (1895-1980), who had been Rector of the University of Helsinki and President of the IMU and who, in the 1950s, had taken the initiative to the computer organisation at Finnish universities.

The Rolf Nevanlinna Prize is awarded every 4 years at the International Congress of Mathematicians, for outstanding contributions in Mathematical Aspects of Information Sciences including:

All mathematical aspects of computer science, including complexity theory, logic of programming languages, analysis of algorithms, cryptography, computer vision, pattern recognition, information processing and modelling of intelligence.

Scientific computing and numerical analysis. Computational aspects of optimisation and control theory. Computer algebra.

The Rolf Nevanlinna Prize Committee was chosen by the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union. A candidate's 40th birthday must not occur before January 1st of the year of the Congress at which the Prize is awarded.

2.2. Peter W Shor awarded the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize.

A Committee consisting of Bjorn Engquist, F Thomas Leighton, Alexander Razborov and David Mumford as chairman decided on the 1998 Rolf Nevanlinna Prize. They solicited a wide variety of opinions and, after much deliberation, awarded the prize to Peter Shor.

Peter Shor was awarded the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize in 1998:-

... for many profound and remarkable results in the analysis of combinatorial algorithms and significant contributions to the development of quantum computing, such as the fast factoring of numbers (thus breaking the RSA encryption scheme), error correction and fault tolerance.

He found many deep and remarkable results prior to 1994 in the analysis of combinatorial algorithms, many with a geometric flavour such as his discovery with Lagarias of a tiling of 10-dimensional Euclidean space by cubes with no common faces. Since 1994, he has been the principal driving force behind the development of quantum computing. First he put it on the map, so to speak, by factoring numbers fast (thus breaking the RSA encryption scheme) by a quantum computer. And second he has led a major assault on error correction and fault tolerance in this new situation, the main obstacles to the realisation of quantum computing.

Professor Olli Lehto presented the award to Peter Shor on behalf of the University of Helsinki.

2.3. Volker Strassen introduces Peter Shor's lecture.

In 1998, Peter Shor waits backstage to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians. He has received the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize, for which he is the fourth recipient in the award's history. Four years prior, while working at Bell Laboratories, he developed the first quantum algorithm for factoring large integers - an unfeasible task on classical computers - thereby rendering many cryptosystems unsafe. A round of applause goes by. He walks on stage. Awaiting him is Volker Strassen, famed mathematician and professor. Strassen and Shor clasp hands. Strassen unfurls a piece of paper bearing a limerick Shor and his wife, Jennifer, wrote a few years earlier for a poetry contest by Science News. Strassen recited the Shors' limerick:

If computers that you build are quantum,
Then spies of all factions will want 'em.
Our codes will all fail,
And they'll read our email,
Till we've crypto that's quantum, and daunt 'em.

After reciting the Shors' limerick, Strassen added a reply of his own:

To read our E-mail, how mean
of the spies and their quantum machine;
Be comforted though,
they do not yet know
how to factorise twelve or fifteen.

2.4. Abstract of Peter W Shor's lecture "Quantum Computing".

The Church-Turing thesis says that a digital computer is a universal computational device; that is, it is able to simulate any physically realisable computational device. It has generally been believed that this simulation can be made efficient so that it entails at most a polynomial increase in computation time. This may not be true if quantum mechanics is taken into consideration. A quantum computer is a hypothetical machine based on quantum mechanics. We explain quantum computing, and give an algorithm for prime factorisation on a quantum computer that runs asymptotically much faster than the best known algorithm on a digital computer. It is not clear whether it will ever be possible to build large-scale quantum computers. One of the main difficulties is in manipulating coherent quantum states without introducing errors or losing coherence. We discuss quantum error-correcting codes and fault-tolerant quantum computing, which can guarantee highly reliable quantum computation, given only moderately reliable quantum computing hardware.

2.5. Introduction of Peter E Shor's lecture "Quantum Computing".

Quantum computers are hypothetical machines that use principles of quantum mechanics for their basic operations. They will be very difficult to build; currently experimental physicists are working on two- and three-bit quantum computers, and useful quantum computers would require hundreds to thousands of bits. However, there seem to be no fundamental physical laws that would preclude their construction. In 1994, I showed that a quantum computer could factor large numbers in time polynomial in the length of the numbers, a nearly exponential speed-up over classical algorithms. This factoring result was surprising for a number of different reasons. First, the connection of quantum mechanics with number theory was itself surprising. For cryptographers, the result was surprising because the difficulty of factoring is the basis of the RSA cryptosystem, and nobody had anticipated the possibility of an attack via quantum physics. For many theoretical computer scientists, it was surprising because they had more or less convinced themselves that no type of computing machine could offer this large a speed-up over a classical digital computer. In retrospect, several results should have led them to question this; however, not much attention was paid to these results until they led to the development of the factoring algorithm.

2.6. Ronald Graham speaks of Peter W Shor's work.

Ronald Graham begins his lecture as follows:

Much of the work of Peter Shor has a strong geometrical flavour, typically coupled with deep ideas from probability, complexity theory or combinatorics, and always woven together with brilliance and insight of the first magnitude.

2.7. Allyn Jackson reports in the Notices of the AMS.

Allyn Jackson wrote the following article which appeared in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society 45 (10) (1998), 1361.

On 18 August 1998, at the Opening Ceremonies of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin Peter W Shor of AT&T Labs in Florham Park, New Jersey, received the 1998 Rolf Nevanlinna Prize.

The University of Helsinki granted funds to award the Nevanlinna Prize, which honours the work of a young mathematician (less than forty years of age) in the mathematical aspects of information science. The prize is presented every four years in conjunction with the Congress. Previous recipients of the Nevanlinna Prize are Robert Tarjan (1982), Leslie Valiant (1986), Alexander Razborov (1990), and Avi Widgerson (1994).

The committee choosing the 1998 Nevanlinna Prize recipient consisted of Bjorn Engquist (University of California, Los Angeles), Tom Leighton (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), David Mumford (Brown University, chair), and Alexander Razborov (Steklov Mathematical Institute, Moscow).

Peter Shor was born on 14 August 1959. He received his undergraduate degree from the California Institute of Technology and his doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before going to AT&T in 1986 he held a postdoctoral position at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley.

All present-day computers are based on the laws of classical physics. In the 1980s Paul Benioff, David Deutsch, and Richard Feynman suggested that one could build a far more powerful computer by exploiting principles of quantum mechanics. ln 1994 Shor gave the first example of an explicit algorithm by which a quantum computer could solve efficiently (i.e., in polynomial time) a natural problem that seems hard to solve on a classical computer. He developed a quantum algorithm for factorising integers; no analogous algorithm is known to exist for traditional computers. Earlier work on algorithms for solving problems on quantum computers dealt with more contrived problems and did not supply such complete results as did Shor's. His work caused great excitement among scientists and mathematicians and also drew wider attention because many cryptosystems are based on the difficulty of factoring numbers on conventional computers. Shor has also done work on quantum error-correcting codes and fault-tolerant quantum computation that addresses some of the main obstructions to making quantum computers a reality. Before his work in quantum computing he produced a number of important results in graph theory and combinatorics.

3.1. The Gödel Prize.

The Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science is sponsored jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM SIGACT). This award is presented annually, with the presentation taking place alternately at the EATCS International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP) and the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC).

The Prize is named in honour of Kurt Gödel in recognition of his major contributions to mathematical logic and of his interest, discovered in a letter he wrote to John von Neumann shortly before von Neumann's death, in what has become the famous "P versus NP" question. The Prize includes an award of USD 5,000.

3.2. Peter W Shor awarded the 1999 Gödel Prize.

The 1999 Gödel Prize for an outstanding journal article in the area of theoretical computer science is awarded to Peter W Shor for his paper "Polynomial-time algorithms for prime factorisation and discrete logarithms on a quantum computer", SIAM Journal on Computing 26 (1997), 1484-1509.

In this breakthrough paper, Shor gives polynomial-time quantum algorithms for integer factoring and for finding discrete logarithms. The implication for quantum computers, hypothetical devices first studied by Benioff and Feynman, is that, if they could really be built and used, their impact on real-world computation would be revolutionary. The assumption that there are no polynomial-time factoring or discrete-log algorithms for classical computers is needed to prove the security of all of today's widely deployed public-key cryptosystems. These two problems have been extensively studied, and indeed the fastest known algorithms that solve them on classical computers require much more than polynomial time. If quantum computers could be built and used, cryptanalysts could use Shor's algorithms to break all of the public-key cryptosystems in wide use today and all of the electronic-commerce applications that depend on them. Moreover, Shor's quantum algorithms for factoring and discrete logarithms have been profoundly influential outside of the study of public-key cryptography and even outside of computer science.

4.1. The Dickson Prize in Science.

The Dickson Prize in Science is awarded annually to the person who has been judged by Carnegie Mellon University to have made the most progress in the scientific field in the United States for the year in question.

4.2. Peter W Shor awarded the 1999 Dickson Prize in Science.

The 1999 Dickson Prize in Science was awarded to Peter Shor, Principal Research Scientist, AT&T Shannon Laboratory, Florham Park, New Jersey.

5.1. The King Faisal International Prize.

The King Faisal International Prize is awarded to "scientists and scholars whose research results in significant advances in specific areas that benefit humanity." It consists of a certificate, hand-written in Arabic calligraphy summarising the laureate's work, a commemorative 24 carat gold medal, uniquely cast for each prize, and a cash award of 750,000 Saudi riyal (150,000 Euro). Prizes are awarded in five categories: Service to Islam; Islamic Studies; Arabic Language and Literature; Medicine; and Science. The Science Prize is announced to be for: Physics; Mathematics; Chemistry; Biology.

5.2. Inception of the King Faisal Prize.

The following is taken from the website of the King Faisal Prize in April 2026.

The idea of establishing the King Faisal Prize came out of the belief in the importance of knowledge and science in opening broader horizons in all fields. It also confirms the cause for which the Foundation was established, which is to spread goodness and hope everywhere, and acknowledge and reward the efforts of scholars and intellectuals in the development and welfare of mankind. From the day it was first established in 1979, the King Faisal Prize has been awarded to 275 laureates, from 43 countries. Many of the Prize's objectives have been reached, and the Foundation has assumed an outstanding leadership in its efforts to honour some of the world's scholars and scientists has been well acknowledged. In this regard, 24 among the Prize recipients in medicine and sciences were subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize in their respective fields.

5.3. Peter W Shor awarded the King Faisal Prize.

Professor Peter W Shor, a member of AT&T Labs Research at the AT&T Shannon Laboratory in Florham Park, New Jersey, was awarded the 2002 King Faisal International Prize for Science, an outstanding scientist in the field of computer science. He point out links between the theory of numbers and that of quantum computers, but he developed intellectual tools to show that quantum computing can tackle exceedingly difficult problems more quickly than contemporary computers. His work is making advances to the problem of resolving a very large integer into its prime factors, the so-called factoring problem. It was a great surprise to computer scientists that quantum computers appear to violate this strengthened Church-Turing thesis.

5.4. The Laureate's Biography.

Peter Shor received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena in 1981, a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1985, followed by post-doctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1986, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and moved, in 1996, to AT&T laboratories in Florham Park, New Jersey.

Professor Shor is most famous for his work on quantum computation, particularly for devising a quantum algorithm, now known as Shor's Algorithm, for factoring faster than the fastest known algorithm running on a digital computer. Shor's algorithm uses a number of steps that grow only polynomially in the size of the instance, for example, the number of digits in the number to be factored. He thus made the physical development of quantum computers (hypothetical machines of which only small prototypes have so far been built) more feasible by showing that errors in the computation need not inevitably disrupt the operations of a quantum computer - he exhibited quantum correcting codes, which could be used to build a quantum computer out of slightly noisy components.

Professor Shor was awarded the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize from the International Congress of Mathematicians, the Dickson Prize in Science, the International Quantum Communication Award and the Gödel Prize for best paper in theoretical computer science. In 1999, he was awarded the MacArthur fellowship (nicknamed "Genius Fellowship"), which is awarded annually by the John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to US citizens and residents of any age and field of research "who show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work."

5.5. The Laureate's Reply.

Your Royal Highness, Prince Sultan Ibn Abd Al-Aziz
Second Deputy Premier, Minister of Defence and Aviation
And Inspector General
Your Royal Highnesses
Your Excellencies
Distinguished Guests

It is a great honour to receive this award, and I would like to use this occasion to thank the King Faisal International Prize Committee, the professors who submitted my nomination, and the organisers who planned this event. I am receiving this prize in part for my discovery that a quantum computer, a hypothetical machine which I hope will be built sometime later this century, could factor large numbers into primes much more quickly than a conventional digital computer. As with most mathematical and scientific discoveries, my discovery of the factorisation algorithm did not proceed from a vacuum, but depended on a' great number of previous discoveries. I would like to trace for you the history of one sequence of discoveries leading to my research. I do this both in the hope that it illustrates better the process of scientific discovery, and also in the possibly mistaken belief that mentioning at this ceremony the names of researchers whose work was essential to my discovery goes some little way towards compensating them for not being here.

I start with the concept of an algorithm. An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure that can be followed mechanically to perform a computation. As computers have no real insight, it is necessary to first have an algorithm for a problem in order to program a computer to solve the problem. The English word algorithm is derived from the name of the great Arabic mathematician Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, who introduced the decimal numerals in the ninth century. The word algorithm originally meant the procedures for performing arithmetic using decimal numerals, and later came also to mean procedures for performing other computations.

David Hilbert was a leading mathematician in the early twentieth century, one of whose gifts was for identifying problems which would be fruitful to attack. In 1928 he posed three problems in the foundations of mathematics, the last of which asked whether an algorithm existed which would determine whether a mathematical proposition was true or false. It was shown in 1936 that no such algorithm could exist; on the way to this result, four papers were written that drew a distinction between computable and non-computable functions. These papers, by Alonzo Church, Stephen Kleene, Emil Post and Alan Turing, contained three completely different definitions of what it meant for a function to be computable. It was soon shown that these three different definitions led to the exact same class of computable functions. This led Church and Turing to propose that this was the natural class of computable functions; this is now called the Church-Turing thesis.

After the first computers were built, it became evident that the distinction between computable and non-computable functions was much too coarse for use in practice. If one needs to obtain a solution to a problem, it is not much use to know that the solution is computable in theory, if the computation would take too long to ever be completed in practice. It gradually became clear that some means of characterising efficiently computable functions was needed. In the 1960's and 1970's computer scientists, most particularly Stephen Cook and Richard Karp, arrived at functions computable in polynomial-time; computable functions seem to be computable reasonably efficiently in practice; additionally, the class of polynomial time as a good compromise between theory and practice. Most natural time - computable functions had enough structure that interesting theorems could be proved about it. Of course, for the definition of functions computable in polynomial time to be universally applicable, it must be independent of the machine used for computation. This led to a strengthening of the Church-Turing thesis; which strengthening says that any function computable by any means can also be computed by a digital computer, while incurring only a polynomial amount of extra overhead. It was a great surprise to computer scientists that quantum computers appear to violate this strengthened Church-Turing thesis.

Until the investigation of quantum computation, it was not widely realised that the Church-Turing thesis, as well as its strengthening, are in truth statement about physics and not mathematics. To show that a digital computer can simulate any possible computer, one has to consider all computers which might exist in the physical world, and it is therefore the laws of physics which constrain the possible machines which might be built. If one were to look for a counterexample to the strengthened Church-Turing thesis, one should thus look for an area of physics which cannot be simulated efficiently on digital computers. One such area is quantum mechanics. It was observed by Yuri Manin, in 1980 in the Soviet Union, and by Richard Feynman, in 1982 in the United Sates, that it is extremely expensive to simulate quantum mechanics using a digital computer; and they proposed that quantum computers might be much more efficient at this task. In 1985, David Deutsch asked the question of whether quantum computers might be more efficient than digital computers for other computational tasks. This question was further addressed by Deutsch, Richards Jozsa, Ethan Bernstein, Umesh Vazirani, and finally Daniel Simon; these researchers found successively better examples of problems which quantum computers could solve more quickly than classical computers. None of these problems, however, was interesting in its own right. While examining Simon's paper, I realised that the key to his algorithm was periodicity structure certain functions he was considering. Since I knew that periodicity was related to the problem of factoring large numbers into the product of primes, this led me to start looking for the factoring algorithm on a quantum computer. The difficulty of factoring is a crucial component of modern cryptography, so my discovery of the factoring algorithm launched the field of quantum computation, which had previously been a sideline studied by only a few people, into the spotlight.

What conclusion can be drawn from this brief history? I think the main conclusion is that the directions science will move in can rarely be foreseen. It appears that David Hubert initially thought that there would be an algorithm for determining the truth for propositions. David Deutsch started investigating quantum computing in relation to questions about the foundations of quantum mechanics which quantum computing has failed to shed much light upon. Daniel Simon discovered his quantum algorithm by trying to prove that quantum computers were no more powerful than classical computers. And when I started to look at quantum computing, I did not expect it would be related to prime factorisation. This unpredictability of science makes it very difficult to answer one of the questions which I am asked most frequently: namely, when will useful quantum computers be built? It is also one of the things that makes science so interesting.

Thank you

6.1. The Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award.

The Distinguished Alumni Award is the highest honour the Institute bestows upon a graduate, and is in recognition of "a particular achievement of noteworthy value, a series of such achievements, or a career of noteworthy accomplishment." Selections are made by a faculty and alumni committee and confirmed by the Board of Trustees. It was first awarded in 1966.

6.2. Peter W Shor awarded the 2007 Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award.

Peter Shor was awarded the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award on 2007. He had graduated from Caltech with a B.Sc. in Mathematics in 1981 and, while still an undergraduate, was named Putnam Fellow in 1978. He had won numerous awards in the ten years prior to receiving this award.

7.1. The ICS Prize.

The INFORMS Computing Society (ICS) awards the ICS Prize annually to the best English-language paper or group of related papers that advance the state of the art in the interface of operations research and computer science. The purpose of the award is: (i) To promote the development of high-quality work advancing the state of the art in the operations research/computer science interface; (ii) To publicise and reward the contributions of those authors/researchers who have advanced the state of the art; and (iii) To increase the visibility of excellent work in the field.

7.2. The paper winning the 2007 ICS Prize.

The INFORMS Computing Society 2007 ICS Prize for Research Excellence in the Interface Between Operations Research and Computer Science is awarded to J Csirik, D S Johnson, C Kenyon, J B Orlin, P W Shor and R R Weber for their paper On the Sum-of-Squares Algorithm for Bin Packing, Journal of the Association of Computing Machinery 53 (2006), 1-65.

The paper presents a very comprehensive analysis of an algorithm for the online bin packing problem. The algorithm, which is deceptively simple, is known as the sum-of-squares algorithm. The authors show that under a very wide class of input distributions the algorithm is asymptotically optimal. Further the analysis leads to simple algorithmic modifications that lead to asymptotic optimality for input distribution classes where the basic algorithm is not asymptotically optimal. The paper fits very strongly at the interface between operations research and computer science as both the bin packing problem and online algorithms have received significant research attention from both communities. In addition, while this work develops strong theory, the theory is used to derive a practical solution approach for all classes of input streams. The proofs of the several results are both deep and, at times, elegant and include the analysis of a linear program of interest in its own right. The algorithm's simplicity and the fact that it is specifically oriented for the online setting suggest that these results should have applicability beyond the bin packing setting.

8.1. The IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award.

The Information Theory Society Paper Award is given annually for an outstanding publication in the fields of interest to the Society appearing anywhere during the preceding four calendar years. The purpose of the Information Theory Paper Award is to recognise exceptional publications in the field and to stimulate interest in and encourage contributions to fields of interest of the Society. The Award consists of an appropriately worded certificate(s) and an honorarium of $1,000 for a paper with a single author, or an honorarium of $2,000 equally split among multiple authors. To be eligible, the paper must have appeared in the preceding four calendar years.

8.2. Peter Shor receives the IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award.

Peter W Shor was a co-author of a paper that won the 2010 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award. The paper was Peter W Shor, Graeme Smith, John A Smolin, and Bei Zeng, High Performance Quantum Codes.

9.1. The IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award.

See 8.1 above.

9.2. Peter Shor receives the IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award.

Peter W Shor was a co-author of a paper that won the 2017 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award. The paper was Charles H Bennett, Igor Devetak, Aram W Harrow, Peter W Shor and Andreas Winter, The Quantum Reverse Shannon Theorem and Resource Tradeoffs for Simulating Quantum Channels.

10.1. The ICTP Dirac Medal.

The International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) first awarded its Dirac Medal in 1985. It is given in honour of P A M Dirac, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and a close friend of the Centre. It is awarded annually on Dirac's birthday, 8 August, to scientists who have made significant contributions to theoretical physics.

10.2. Peter W Shor awarded the ICTP Dirac Medal.

ICTP has awarded its 2017 Dirac Medal and Prize to three scientist including Peter W Shor (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for their pioneering work in applying the fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics to basic problems in computation and communication, thereby bringing together the fields of quantum mechanics, computer science and information, creating the field of quantum information science.

"ICTP's 2017 Dirac Medallists have applied their deep knowledge of quantum theory to computation and communication," says ICTP Director Fernando Quevedo, adding, "Indeed, their work formed the foundation on which the development of quantum information science has been built."

Today, quantum information science is a large and intense field of research, both theoretical and experimental. It relies on the remarkable ways that quantum mechanics differs from the classical mechanics that describes much of our everyday world. Conventional information science involves data in the form of bits, each of which must have a definite value of zero or one. Quantum information science uses the quantum bit, or qubit, which may exist in a quantum superposition that includes values of zero and one simultaneously. Superpositions of two or more qubits may exhibit a further property called entanglement, in which the qubits' values are correlated in ways that defy classical intuition. The three medallists for 2017 each made key contributions in uncovering how the uniquely quantum characteristics of qubits may be exploited to process and transmit data, thus launching the field of quantum information science.

Peter Shor boosted the field of quantum computation by designing efficient quantum algorithms for factoring large numbers and computing discrete logarithms, each of which can be used to break classical encryption schemes. He thus proved that a quantum computer could solve a useful, hard computational problem exponentially faster than any known classical computer algorithm. Shor also introduced quantum error-correcting codes and fault-tolerant quantum computation, which are schemes for coping with the effects of stray interactions (noise) disturbing qubits. Without robust quantum error correction, large-scale quantum computation could be stymied by the extreme sensitivity of quantum states to noise. Instead, the theory of quantum error correction is now a well-established branch of quantum information science, and the difficult path to developing large-scale quantum computers appears open.

11.1. The Micius Quantum Prizes.

Quantum mechanics, discovered in the beginning of the last century, has been an enormously successful theory of the nature, and has led to the development of many of today's most widely used technologies that completely changed the landscape of our society. In past decades, profound progresses, made both in our understanding of exploiting quantum superposition and entanglement for new ways of information processing and in the experimental methods of coherent control and interaction of individual quantum particles, have given birth to an emerging field of quantum technologies, also known as the second quantum revolution, which moved beyond the first quantum revolution that simply exploited naturally occurring quantum effects. The second quantum revolution has been driving and enabling a new generation of classically impossible tasks ranging from unconditionally secure quantum communications, breathtakingly powerful quantum simulation and quantum computation, to extremely sensitive measurements.

To promote the second quantum revolution, a new science foundation, the "Micius Quantum Foundation" was established in 2018 thanks to generous donations from private entrepreneurs. This Foundation is named after Micius, a Chinese ancient philosopher who lived in the similar period of the Western philosopher Democritus. Micius strongly stood for peace, put forward the concept of "universal love", and performed original scientific work such as the pinhole experiment that proved light travelled straight. His book contained some preliminary idea of Newton's first law of motion, which wrote: "The stop of motion is due to the opposing force ... If there is no opposing force ... the motion will never stop." Micius also held a belief that objects can infinitely divided into small pieces, but there is a smallest fundamental unit of particle, a concept with coincidence to our modern quantum physics.

One of the important missions of the Micius Quantum Foundation was to establish the "Micius Quantum Prize" to recognise the scientists who have made outstanding contributions in the field of quantum communications, quantum simulation, quantum computation, and quantum metrology. The revenue of the Micius Quantum Foundation is distributed in the form of prizes. Each honouree will receive a tax-free prize of one million Chinese yuan (about 150,000 US dollars) and a gold medal.

11.2. Peter W Shor awarded a Micius Quantum Prize.

The Micius Quantum Prizes 2018 are awarded to the field of quantum computation. There are four laureates including Peter Shor who were given the award for their seminal theoretical work on quantum algorithms and physical architectures of quantum computers and simulators. In particular Peter Shor received the award for his groundbreaking theoretical work on the factoring algorithm and quantum error correction. The award ceremony for 2018 and 2019 prizes was held on 20 September 2019 during the International Conference on Emerging Quantum Technologies in Hefei, China.

11.3. MIT announces Peter Shor wins 2018 Micius Quantum Prize.

Sandi Miller, Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, posted the following on 26 April 2019:

Peter Shor has been awarded the $150,000 2018 Micius Quantum Prize, named after a fifth-century B.C. Chinese scientist, for his groundbreaking theoretical work in the field of quantum computation.

Peter Shor, the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT, has received the 2018 Micius Quantum Prize, which is awarded within the field of quantum computation.

Shor was nominated for his groundbreaking theoretical work on the factoring algorithm and quantum error correction. Shor, who received his PhD in applied mathematics from MIT in 1985 under the direction of Tom Leighton, is known for his work on quantum computation. Shor's algorithm is a groundbreaking integer-factoring algorithm that he developed in the mid-1990s, which proves a quantum computer can calculate the prime factors of a large number exponentially faster than a classical computer.

"Peter Shor's quantum algorithms, starting from his factoring algorithm - known as Shor's algorithm - has revolutionised the field of quantum computing," says Michel Goemans, department head and professor of mathematics. "One could even say that the field would never have taken off without his deep and significant contributions to it."

The algorithm is designed to use a quantum computer to quickly break through the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adelman) encryption algorithm, which is based on the difficulty of prime factorisation, a major concern for the security of classical computing systems. Shor also introduced quantum error-correcting codes and fault-tolerant quantum computation to protect quantum states against decoherence and noise.

He will receive 1 million Chinese yuan (about $150,000) as part of his award, which he expects to put toward his continued research into quantum cryptography and quantum information theory. One idea: "I'm thinking about how quantum information relates to black holes," he says.

More importantly, says Shor, the Micius Quantum Prize "will draw a lot of attention to the field."

"It's an exciting time," he says. "The U.S. government and the Chinese government are putting a lot of money into quantum computing. Experimentalists are starting to build quantum computers that are reaching the point where they can't be simulated by digital computers. People are building very small prototypes, as experiments to see how big quantum computers will behave."

Shor has received many other awards for his quantum computing research, including the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, the IEEE Eric E Sumner Award, for Outstanding Contributions to Communications Technology, and the Nevanlinna Prize. He also is affiliated with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Center for Theoretical Physics.

The Micius Quantum Prize recognises significant science advances ranging from early conceptual contributions to recent experimental breakthroughs in the field of quantum communications, quantum simulation, quantum computation, and quantum metrology. Funded by private entrepreneurs, the Micius Quantum Foundation was named after the fifth-century B.C. Chinese scientist - who is also known as Mozi - who used a pinhole to discover that light travels in straight lines, and who wrote an earlier version of what later became Newton's first law of motion.

The newly announced 2018 and 2019 laureates represent the inaugural winners of the Micius Quantum Prize.

12.1. The IEEE Eric E Sumner Award.

The IEEE Eric E Sumner Award was established by the IEEE Board of Directors in 1995. It is named in honour of 1991 IEEE President Eric E Sumner, who retired as Vice President, Operations Planning, AT&T Bell Laboratories after a long and distinguished career. It is presented to an individual or a team of not more than three "for outstanding contributions to communications technology." The award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium.

In the evaluation process, the following criteria are considered: research, development, and application contributions to all aspects of leading-edge communication technology (work cited could have appeared in the form of publications, patents, or products, or could be a generally recognised major technological advancement in the field), and the quality of the nomination.

12.2. Peter W Shor awarded the IEEE Eric E Sumner Award.

Peter W Shor, Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA was awarded the 2018 IEEE Eric E Sumner Award "For contributions to quantum communication
and information theory."

Peter W Shor's dramatic breakthroughs have fuelled the modern quantum information revolution and ignited a global race to build the world's first practical quantum computer. Shor's 1994 integer factoring algorithm demonstrated that quantum computers could solve concrete and highly sensitive problems much faster than silicon computers. His algorithm also showed that encryption codes could be broken, which has had great implications for the security of classical communication systems. Shor proved sceptics of quantum communication wrong by pioneering the development of quantum error-correction codes to protect quantum states against decoherence and noise. His quantum accuracy threshold theorem provides confidence in the potential for constructing large-scale quantum computers since it guarantees that quantum computation is possible despite imperfections, provided the noise level is sufficiently low.

13.1. The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award.

The financial group Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) set up the BBVA Foundation. The promotion of knowledge based on research and artistic and cultural creation, and the interaction of these domains, forms a core strand of the BBVA Foundation's work program. They claim that the most effective way to increase the degrees of freedom available to individuals and expand our collective choices is to continually enlarge and reinvent our cultural fabric and the frontiers of inherited knowledge. The three main thrusts of the Foundation's work are accordingly: support for scientific research and cultural creation (through grants for individuals and teams); the dissemination of knowledge and culture; and the recognition of talent and innovation through diverse families of awards.

The Foundation focuses its activity on the analysis of emerging issues in five strategic areas: Environment, Biomedicine and Health, Economy and Society, Basic Sciences and Technology, and Culture. It is partnered in the scheme by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain's premier public research organisation.

13.2. Pioneers of quantum cryptography receive Frontiers of Knowledge Awards.

The BBVA Foundation honoured Charles Bennett, Gilles Brassard, and Peter Shor with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences for their respective roles in the development of quantum computing and cryptography.

In the 1980s, the chemical physicist, Charles Bennett, and the computer scientist, Gilles Brassard, invented quantum cryptography, enabling the encoding and transmission of messages, thus ensuring the physical inviolability of data communications. The relevance of this technology was revealed ten years later when the mathematician, Peter Shor, discovered that a hypothetical quantum computer would render the conventional cryptographic systems on which current Internet communication security and privacy depend effectively useless.

Their pioneering work has significantly contributed to the development of quantum computers, which deliver greater speed and scale than traditional computers when performing calculations, as well as to quantum systems of cryptography, which will be required to safeguard communications in the future. Their work, "spans multiple disciplines and brings together concepts from mathematics, physics and computer science, Their ideas are playing a key role in the development of quantum technologies for communication and computation," the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards jury explained.

Quantum cryptography arose from findings in basic science, but in just a few decades it has given rise to a new technology seemingly on the cusp of a market explosion. When Bennett and Brassard began working together in 1979, this reality did not even enter the realm of possibility. Quantum physics and quantum computing were distinct fields of work, and research crossing between the two was minimal. By1984, Bennett and Brassard had produced a striking result: a cryptographic system that enabled the encoding and transmission of messages using the laws of quantum physics in order to prevent third parties from "listening" even should they have quantum resources at their disposal.

"Quantum information is a kind of information that is disturbed by observation and cannot be copied. Gilles Brassard and I realised that it could be used for the practical purpose of sending messages, in such a way that the sender and receiver could tell immediately whether anyone had listened to the message en route," Bennett recounted after he learned of the recognition from the Frontiers of Knowledge Award. "And that, in essence, is quantum key distribution or quantum cryptography," he concludes.

Shor discovered that the supposedly unsolvable problem on which classic cryptography is based - the factorisation of large numbers - could indeed be addressed by a hypothetical quantum computer. The mathematician's contribution to the field carries his name: Shor's algorithm, and is one of the quantum algorithms that constitutes the computer language - still in the throes of development - of the quantum computers of the future. "When Shor discovered that if you could build a quantum computer, it would defeat certain cryptographic systems in widespread use, that stimulated a lot more research, because the cryptographers wanted to find more secure systems that were harder to break," explains Bennett. "And at the same time other people wanted to build a better quantum computer to see what it could be used for besides code breaking."

At present, quantum cryptography is one of the most advanced of all quantum technologies. The ongoing development of quantum computing, however, is viewed by the Frontier of Knowledge Award winners as a long term challenge, which will not immediately deliver on the high expectations that have followed the first prototypes developed by the big tech companies. Still, they do not doubt the future potential of quantum computers. According to Brassard, "the 19th century was the era of steam power, the 20th century was the era of information, and the 21st century will go down in history as the quantum age, the age in which quantum technologies dominate all the changes occurring in society, in a way we cannot yet foresee."

Commenting on his expectations, Shor says, "it will be 5 or 10 years before a quantum computer can do anything approaching useful," but he is convinced that, with time, revolutionary applications will be achieved with these machines, for example in the field of biomedicine, assisting the development of new pharmaceuticals: "At the moment, it takes enormous amounts of computer time to simulate the behaviour of molecules, but quantum computers could achieve that, and help design new drugs."

14.1. The Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture and Medal.

Lise Meitner (7 November 1878 - 27 October 1968) was a leading Austrian-Swedish physicist who played a key role in the discovery of the nuclear fission. She spent a substantial part of her career in Stockholm. To commemorate her the Lise Meitner memorial Lecture and Medal takes place annually at the AlbaNova university centre. Established in 2015, the award consists of a distinguished lecture delivered by the recipient, followed by the presentation of a medal. The inaugural lecture, entitled "Physics in 100 years," was delivered by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek on 11 June 2015. The Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture is sponsored by Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences through its Nobel Committee for Physics.

14.2. Peter W Shor gives the Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture.

On Thursday 30 March, Peter Shor delivered the Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture "Quantum Computing". He gave the following Abstract:

Shortly after quantum mechanics was first formulated around 1930, it became evident that it was a strange theory. It took over fifty years, however, for people to realise just how pervasive its strangeness was. We have now discovered that information theory, the theory of computation, and the theory of cryptography all change substantially when quantum mechanics is taken into account. It turns out that this strangeness can be used to accomplish tasks with quantum information processing that are not possible classically. One example of this, and the one that really drew attention to this phenomenon, was my discovery that quantum computers could factor large numbers into primes in manageable time frames, something that would take digital computers billions of years. Further, the theory of information transmission changes substantially when information is transmitted over quantum channels rather than over classical ones. And we have also discovered cryptographic protocols that use quantum information to perform tasks that are impossible classically.

I will survey these discoveries, and talk about my recollections of their development.

15.1. The James R Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award.

The Killian Award was established in 1971 to honour former MIT president James R Killian, Jr. The award recognises the extraordinary professional achievement by MIT faculty members. The award recipient holds the title of Killian Award Lecturer for the following academic year, and gives one or more lectures during that period related to their professional activities.

15.2. Peter W Shor received the 2022-2023 Killian Award.

Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, posted the following on 11 May 2022:

Renowned mathematician and quantum computing pioneer Peter W. Shor PhD '85 has been named the recipient of MIT's 2022-2023 James R Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, the highest honor the Institute faculty can bestow upon one of its members each academic year.

The Killian Award citation credits Shor, who is the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics, with having made "seminal contributions that have forever shaped the foundations of quantum computing. Indeed, quantum computing exists today, in practice, because of Peter Shor."

"Moreover," the citation continues, "Professor Shor's work demonstrates that quantum computers have the potential to open up new avenues of human thought and endeavour." The award was announced at today's faculty meeting.

"Peter Shor's work on quantum computing not only demonstrated that quantum computers as imagined by Richard Feynman could efficiently solve problems that classical computers couldn't, but also that the whole error-correcting code approach of Claude Shannon in the classical case had a quantum analogue," says Michel Goemans, the RSA Professor and head of MIT's Department of Mathematics. "Peter's vision and technical mastery really transformed the field."

Shor is best known for having derived the eponymous Shor's algorithm, a groundbreaking work that proved that a system of quantum bits, or "qubits," could theoretically solve some problems exponentially faster than the most powerful, bit-based classical computers.

The algorithm harnesses a fundamental property of quantum mechanics known as "superposition," which makes it possible for a single particle to occupy two or more states simultaneously. Only when the particle is observed does it settle into a single state. Shor proved such particles could be assembled into a quantum computer, each qubit able to exhibit certain effects while in superposition, to solve some problems much faster than the fastest supercomputer.

Specifically, Shor showed that such a quantum system could carry out prime factorisation of extremely large numbers - a problem that was thought to be unsolvable by state-of-the-art computers. The hardness of prime factorisation is the typical assumption underlying modern security systems. Shor's algorithm turned this assumption on its head, proving that such cryptosystems could in theory be cracked, once a large enough system of quantum bits could be built.

Shor derived his algorithm in 1994, at a time when quantum computing was largely considered a thought experiment. Realising a practical quantum computer, many believed, was not realistic: Noise in the environment would scramble a quantum system's delicate superposition states and cause numerous errors in calculations. While errors in a classical computer can be identified and fixed by measuring individual bits, the act of measuring a qubit in a quantum computer would effectively dissolve its quantum state, and its calculation. Scientists therefore believed that practical quantum computing was nearly impossible.

But in 1995, Shor countered this assumption with another algorithm, on quantum error correction, introducing the idea that quantum errors could be isolated and fixed without measuring the qubit itself, thereby leaving the quantum computation intact. Shor's solution, along with work by others, set off the beginning of the field of quantum error correction and remains a central ingredient in enabling progressively more complex quantum computations.

Throughout his career, Shor has made major contributions in theoretical computer science that have driven the field of quantum computing, quantum information science (the study of how information is processed and relayed with respect to the principles of quantum mechanics), and quantum cryptography (a method of encryption that uses properties of quantum mechanics to secure and transmit information).

In recognition of his accomplishments, Shor has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship, the Nevanlinna Prize (now the IMU Abacus Medal), the Dirac Medal, the King Faisal International Prize in Science, and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the Association for Computing Machinery.

Shor received his BS in mathematics in 1981 from Caltech. He earned a PhD in applied mathematics from MIT in 1985, where he was advised by Tom Leighton, professor of applied mathematics at MIT. He then spent one year as a postdoc at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute before accepting a position at AT&T Bell Labs, where he developed Shor's algorithm. In 2003, he returned to MIT.

"We are delighted to have this opportunity to honour Professor Peter Shor for his extraordinary contributions to science, as the ground-breaking founder of the disciplines of quantum computing and quantum information science," the citation concludes. "He is an example of the best of MIT."

16.1. The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Every year, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation recognises game-changing contributions to various fields of science and technology with its highly coveted 'Oscars of Science'. One set of three prizes, the Breakthrough Prizes, are awarded in Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics. A second set of awards, the New Horizons prizes, typically reward early-career scientists.

Insights from fundamental physics have overturned our assumptions about the world around us. Last century, general relativity reshaped our picture of space and time, and quantum mechanics replaced the march of cause and effect with a dance of probabilities. Just in the last few decades, we have detected the Higgs boson and gravitational waves, and discovered that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.

This century is likely to produce more surprises. From the subatomic to the cosmic scale, physicists are opening windows into the deep structure of reality.

The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was founded in 2012 by Yuri Milner to recognise those individuals who have made profound contributions to human knowledge. It is open to all physicists - theoretical, mathematical, experimental - working on the deepest mysteries of the Universe.

16.2. Peter W Shor awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Peter W Shor, Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, was awarded the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics:-

... for foundational work in the field of quantum information.

16.3. MIT announces Peter Shor wins the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, posted the following on 22 September 2022:

Peter Shor, the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT, has been named a recipient of the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. He shares the $3 million prize with three others for "foundational work in the field of quantum information": David Deutsch at the University of Oxford, Charles Bennett at IBM Research, and Gilles Brassard of the University of Montreal.

In announcing the award, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation highlighted Shor's contributions to the quantum information field, including the eponymous Shor's algorithm for factoring extremely large numbers, and for an algorithm to correct errors in quantum computers.

"These ideas not only paved the way for today's fast-developing quantum computers; they are now also at the frontiers of fundamental physics, especially in the study of metrology - the science of measurement - and of quantum gravity," the award announcement reads.

"I'm very grateful to see the prize going to quantum information and quantum computation theory this year," Shor commented to MIT News. "My three co-winners were the most influential people in founding this field. I consider them friends, and they all clearly deserve it."

In addition, an MIT alumnus, Daniel A Spielman PhD '95, has won the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics for "contributions to theoretical computer science and mathematics, including to spectral graph theory, the Kadison-Singer problem, numerical linear algebra, optimisation, and coding theory."

"I am ecstatic to see both Peter Shor and Dan Spielman be recognised with Breakthrough Prizes in Fundamental Physics and Mathematics, respectively," says Michel Goemans, the RSA Professor and head of MIT's Department of Mathematics. "Both would have been natural nominees of the Breakthrough Prize in Theoretical Computer Science, if such a prize existed. Peter and Dan are PhD graduates of our math department, both have held tenured appointments in our department and have been members of the theory group at CSAIL, and both have received the same prizes. It is a testimony of the importance of theoretical computer science across disciplines, in particular mathematics and physics."

The first seeds of quantum computing's potential were planted through the early algorithms derived by Deutsch, Bennett, Brassard, and Shor.

In the early 1980s, Deutsch began thinking of problems whose solutions could be sped up using quantum algorithms - formulas that were derived using the laws of quantum mechanics, rather than classical physics. He was the first to develop a quantum algorithm that could solve a simple, albeit contrived, problem far more efficiently than a classical algorithm.

Meanwhile, Bennett and Brassard were also looking for uses of quantum information. In 1984, they developed the first quantum cryptography protocol, BB84. They put forth the idea that two distant parties could agree on a secret encryption key, which would be secure against eavesdroppers, based on a strange quantum principle in which the value of the encryption key would instantly be disturbed and therefore unreadable when measured.

Their work demonstrated the first practical application of quantum information theory. It was also Shor's first introduction to the field. The mathematician was working at AT&T Bell Labs at the time, and Bennett came to give a talk on his new quantum key encryption system. "Their work inspired me to do a little thinking and research on quantum information," Shor recalls. "But I didn't really get anywhere at the time."

A decade later, in 1994, Shor introduced his own landmark algorithm. Shor's algorithm describes how a sufficiently large quantum computer could efficiently factorise extremely large numbers - a task that would take more than the age of the universe for the most powerful classical supercomputer to solve.

Most data encryption schemes today rely on the difficulty of factorisation to keep information secure. Shor's algorithm was the first to show that, in theory, a quantum system could break through most modern data security walls. To do this practically, however, would require a system of many precisely controlled quantum bits. Even then, scientists assumed that the tiniest noise in the environment would disrupt the delicate qubits, and set off a ripple of errors in their calculations that could not be corrected without further disturbing the qubits.

"When I first came up with this factoring algorithm, people thought it would remain theoretical forever because there was this argument that you could not correct errors on a quantum computer," Shor says.

Shortly thereafter, in 1995, Shor worked out another algorithm, this time on quantum error correction, which showed that errors in a quantum system could in fact be isolated and fixed without disturbing the qubit itself, thereby leaving the quantum computation intact. The vision of a practical quantum computer became immediately tangible.

"With these two bombshell contributions, Peter set the stage for quantum computing to become the huge field that it is now," says Alan Guth, the Victor F Weisskopf Professor of Physics at MIT, who as a former recipient of the Breakthrough Prize, was the one who called Shor to deliver the news of this year's award.

"It was a real pleasure for me to be able to tell him that he is one of the winners," Guth says. "His algorithms took the world by surprise, and ignited the field of quantum computing. And despite his spectacular contributions, Peter continues to be a warm, friendly, smiling colleague to all around him."

"Peter is a wonderful colleague and is totally unique," adds Goemans. "His thought process seems to parallel the quantum algorithms he designs and invents: Out of entangled ideas and a superposition of states, a brilliant solution often emerges in a Eureka moment!"

"One of the best things about MIT is that we have great students," says Shor, who earned a PhD in applied mathematics from MIT in 1985. He then spent one year as a postdoc at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute before moving on to work at AT&T Bell Labs, where he developed Shor's algorithm. In 2003, he returned to MIT, where he has continued his research and teaching for the past 20 years.

Today, he is working to formulate a theory of quantum information, which would describe how data can be stored and transmitted, using the principles of quantum physics. Will there come a day when quantum computers are advanced enough to break through our classical security systems?

"In five or 10 years, we could be at the start of a Moore's Law, where quantum computers will steadily improve every few years," Shor predicts. "I suspect they'll improve fast enough that within two or three decades we will get quantum computers that can do useful stuff. Hopefully by the time quantum computers are that large, we'll be using different crypto systems that aren't susceptible to quantum computers."

Shor credits his father with fostering his early interest in mathematics. As a young boy, would flip through his father's issues of Scientific American, to find his favourite section.

"Martin Gardner had a column, 'Mathematical Games,' which was really amazing," Shor recalls. "It was sometimes a puzzle, sometimes a report on a new discovery in mathematics, and it was often at a level that I could understand. I looked forward to reading it every month, and that was something that turned me onto math early on."

16.4. Nature Photonics announces the winners of the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

The following extract is from the article Quantum Breakthrough awards in Nature Photonics 16 (2022), 743:

The 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics has been awarded to Charles Bennett (IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center), Gilles Brassard (Université de Montréal), David Deutsch (Oxford University) and Peter Shor (MIT) for their 'foundational work in the field of quantum information'. Long before the practical implementation of quantum protocols, the four awardees planted early theoretical seeds to make a case for quantum computation. In the 1980s, Deutsch began developing a theory of computation that would lead to the quantum generalisation of a Turing machine, while Bennett and Brassard developed the first quantum cryptography protocol. Shor's most renowned contribution is the development of quantum algorithms for prime number factorisation. Although these ideas were making strong cases, they were met with scepticism at the time. At a quantum computing conference in 1995 in Turin, Shor bet audiences that the first factorisation of a 500-digit number would be performed by a quantum computer, rather than a classical one. Very few people shared Shor's optimism, with many attendees preferring to bet that the Sun would burn out first.

17.1. The Foundations of Computer Science Test of Time Award.

The Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) Test of Time Award is an annual prize presented at the IEEE Symposium. Established in 2021, it recognises papers published in the conference proceedings 10, 20, and 30 years prior that have had a "substantial, lasting, broad, and currently relevant impact" on the theory of computing or computer science in general.

17.2. Peter W Shor awarded the Foundations of Computer Science Test of Time Award.

Peer Shor received the Foundations of Computer Science Test of Time Award in 2024 for his paper on quantum factoring Algorithms for quantum computation: discrete logarithms and factoring, published in 1994.

18.1. The Claude E Shannon Award.

The Claude E.Shannon Award is the highest honour from the IEEE Information Theory Society. The award recognises consistent and profound contributions to the field of information theory. Each Shannon Award winner is expected to present a Shannon Lecture at the following IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory. The first Shannon Lecturer was Claude Shannon himself.

18.2. Peter W Shor awarded the Claude E Shannon Award.

The IEEE Information Theory Society announced that Professor Peter Shor (MIT) is the recipient of the 2025 Claude E Shannon Award for consistent and profound contributions to the field of information theory.

Peter Shor is the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Shor is well known for his quantum factoring and discrete-log algorithms. Following the 1994 publications of those algorithms Professor Shor made a number of fundamental information-theoretic contributions that set firm engineering foundations for the field. To address the concern that errors and noise would be an insurmountable problem to implementation of the factoring algorithm, Shor proposed the first quantum error-correcting codes. Next, while classic error-correction presumes reliable encoding and ecoding, quantum algorithms cannot make the same assumption. Shor developed a theory of, and methods for, fault-tolerating quantum computing. Third, Shor worked with co-workers to develop a systematic theory of quantum error-correction that allowed classic code constructions to be imported into quantum ECC. Fourth, Shor contributed to a number of questions of channel capacity for quantum channels. Beyond the above Peter Shor has contributed to a wide range of other problems, say in quantum cryptography and other fields. Peter Shor also served as the first AE in "Quantum Information Theory" for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory from 2000-2002.

18.3. Peter W Shor delivers the Shannon Lecture.

He delivered his Shannon Lecture Quantum Error Correcting Codes And Quantum Channel Capacities at ISIT 2025 (2025 International Symposium on Information Theory) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA on Thursday 26 June 2025. He gave the following Abstract of the lecture:

Often, when quantum mechanics is introduced into a theory, the theory changes radically. This happens with quantum information theory. We will discuss quantum error correcting codes and quantum channel capacities. While there is essentially only one classical capacity, there are many different quantum capacities, and they do not behave as nicely as classical capacity. Quantum error correcting codes must satisfy more constraints than classical ones, which means they are quite a bit harder to construct. We still don't have efficient quantum error correcting codes that asymptotically approach the quantum capacity. We will discuss some of the parallels and the differences between classical and quantum information theory.

18.4. Peter W Shor's biography for the Claude E Shannon Award.

Peter Shor is Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics since 2003. He received the B.A. in mathematics from Caltech in 1981, and the Ph.D. in applied mathematics from MIT in 1985, under the direction of Tom Leighton. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at MSRI, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories. He was a member of its Research staff, 1986-2003. He joined the MIT faculty in applied mathematics as full professor in 2003. Professor Shor's research interests are in theoretical computer science: currently on algorithms, quantum computing, computational geometry and combinatorics. In 1998, Peter Shor received the Nevanlinna Prize and the International Quantum Communication Award. He also received the Dickson Prize in Science from Carnegie-Mellon in 1998. He was awarded the Gödel Prize of the ACM and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1999. He received the King Faisal International Prize in Science in 2002, and was named one of Caltech's Distinguished Alumni in 2007. He is a member of the National Academy of Science (2002), and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011). In 2017, Professor Shor received the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. He also received the 2017 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award, jointly with Charles Bennett, Igor Devetak, Aram Harrow, and Andreas Winter for the paper "The Quantum Reverse Shannon Theorem and Resource Tradeoffs for Simulating Quantum Channels" which appeared in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 60, no. 5, pp. 2926–2959, May 2014. In 2018, Shor received the IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award, for Outstanding Contributions to Communications Technology. He also received the 2018 Micius Quantum Prize in April 2019. In May 2022, Shor was named the recipient of MIT's 2022-2023 James R Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, the highest honour the Institute faculty can bestow upon one of its members each academic year. The award citation credits Peter's "seminal contributions that have forever shaped the foundations of quantum computing. Indeed, quantum computing exists today, in practice, because of Peter Shor." As of 2020, Shor is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, and in 2022 Fellow of the AMS. Professor Shor also won the Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture and Medal in 2022, and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2023.