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  • Laureates
    • Laureate 2024
    • Prize 2024
    • Past laureates
    • Subsequent Nobel Prize laureates
  • Nomination
    • Nomination 2025
  • The award ceremony
    • The award ceremony 2024
    • The award ceremony 2023
    • The award ceremony 2022
    • The award ceremony 2021
    • The award ceremony 2020
    • The award ceremony 2019
    • The award ceremony 2018
    • The award ceremonies of the past
  • Activities
    • Lecture 2025
    • Workshop 2024
    • Lecture 2024
  • Marcel Benoist
    • The founder
    • The legacy
  • Foundation
    • Foundation
    • News
    • Board of Trustees
    • Patronage Committee and Friends
    • Create excellence!
    • Foundation assets
    • Contact

Nicolas Gisin

Laureate 2014: Nicolas Gisin

Quantum physics provides solutions to encoding top secret data

Back in the 1990s Nicolas Gisin was one of the first physicists to understand how quanta – the smallest particles currently known –could be transmitted over fibre-optic networks and the enormous potential that lay in the practical application of this discovery. He succeeded in transmitting a cryptographic key – the basis of cryptography – via industrial optical fibres over a distance of 23km under the lake between Geneva and Nyon. When this key was transmitted, secured by the laws of quantum physics and thus absolutely random and confidential, quantum communication entered into our everyday lives; it now makes a huge contribution to ensuring the security of information systems.

Contact

Marcel Benoist Foundation
State Secretariat for Education,
Research and Innovation SERI
Einsteinstrasse 2
CH – 3003 Bern

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