The John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and their Applications (short form: Bell Prize) was established in 2009, funded and managed by the University of Toronto, Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC). [1] Named after John Stewart Bell (the physicist behind Bell's theorem, a theorem whose experimental vindication led to a Nobel Prize), it is awarded every odd-numbered year, for significant contributions relating to the foundations of quantum mechanics and to the applications of these principles – this covers, but is not limited to, quantum information theory, quantum computation, quantum foundations, quantum cryptography and quantum control. [2] The selection committee has included Gilles Brassard, Peter Zoller, Alain Aspect, John Preskill, and Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain, in addition to previous winners Sandu Popescu, Michel Devoret and Nicolas Gisin. [3]
| Year | Medalists [4] | Affiliation | Reason | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Nicolas Gisin | Professor of Physics at the Université de Genève | For his theoretical and experimental work on quantum nonlocality, quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation. [5] | |
| 2011 | Sandu Popescu | Professor of Physics at the University of Bristol, UK | For discoveries of stronger-than-quantum no-signaling correlations, and the application of quantum theory to thermodynamics. [6] | |
| 2013 | Michel Devoret and Robert J. Schoelkopf | Professors of Applied Physics at Yale University, USA | For their work on entangling superconducting qubits and microwave photons, and their application to quantum information processing. [7] | |
| 2015 | Rainer Blatt | Professor of Experimental Physics at University of Innsbruck, and director of Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Innsbruck, Austria | For his works on quantum information processing with trapped ions. [8] | |
| 2017 | Ronald Hanson, Sae Woo Nam, and Anton Zeilinger | Delft University of Technology, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and University of Vienna respectively | For "their groups’ experiments simultaneously closing the detection and locality loopholes in a violation of Bell's Inequalities". [9] | |
| 2019 | Juan Ignacio Cirac and Peter Zoller | Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and University of Innsbruck with IQOQI respectively | For "groundbreaking proposals in quantum optics and atomic physics on how to engineer quantum systems . . . and using Projected Entangled Pair States for the theoretical study of quantum many body systems". [10] | |
| 2021 | John M. Martinis | University of California, Santa Barbara | For innovations in designing and controlling superconducting devices [11] | |
| 2024 | John Preskill | Professor of Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology | For "developments at the interface of efficient learning and processing of quantum information in quantum computation, and following upon long standing intellectual leadership in near-term quantum computing." [12] | |
| 2026 | Antoine Browaeys, Mikhail Lukin, and Mark Saffman | CNRS and Université Paris-Saclay, Harvard University, and University of Wisconsin - Madison, respectively | For "pioneering contributions to quantum simulation and quantum computing with neutral atoms in optical tweezer arrays, including the development of large-scale programmable arrays for scalable quantum computation" [13] |