“Invest in curiosity”: an interview with Professor Gilles Brassard

By Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo 

Professor of computer science Gilles Brassard, at the Université de Montréal, is one of the pioneers of quantum information science. On June 17, as part of this spring’s convocation proceedings, the Faculty of Mathematics will award him a Doctor of Mathematics, honoris causa.

In 1984, along with his lifelong collaborator Professor Charles H. Bennett, Brassard published the BB84 protocol for quantum cryptography. His fundamental research in quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation, quantum entanglement distillation, quantum pseudotelepathy, and the classical simulation of quantum entanglement have transformed the field, and earned him recognitions including the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal, the Killam Prize in Natural Sciences, the Wolf Prize in Physics, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Society of London, and nominations as Officer in the Order of Canada and the Ordre national du Québec. 

Most recently, Brassard and Bennett received the 2025 A. M. Turing Award, often considered the “Nobel Prize of Computing.” “Bennett and Brassard fundamentally changed our understanding of information itself,” says Professor Yannis Ioannidis, president of the Association for Computing Machinery. “Their insights expanded the boundaries of computing and set in motion decades of discovery across disciplines. The global momentum behind quantum technologies today underscores the enduring importance of their contributions.”