David Deutsch | |
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Born | 1953 (age 58) Haifa, Israel |
Fields | Theoretical physics Quantum information science |
Institutions | University of Oxford Clarendon Laboratory |
Doctoral advisor | Dennis Sciama |
Doctoral students | Artur Ekert |
Known for | Quantum Turing machine Church-Turing-Deutsch principle Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm Quantum logic gate Quantum circuit Quantum error correction Qubit field theory Quantum constructor theory The Fabric of Reality The Beginning of Infinity |
Notable awards | Dirac Prize (1998) |
David Elieser Deutsch, FRS (born 1953 in Haifa, Israel) is an Israeli-British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a non-stipendiary Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by being the first person to formulate a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer.[1] He is also a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
In the Royal Society of London's announcement of Deutsch becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2008, the Society described Deutsch's contributions thus:[2]
David Deutsch laid the foundations of the quantum theory of computation, and has subsequently made or participated in many of the most important advances in the field, including the discovery of the first quantum algorithms, the theory of quantum logic gates and quantum computational networks, the first quantum error-correction scheme, and several fundamental quantum universality results. He has set the agenda for worldwide research efforts in this new, interdisciplinary field, made progress in understanding its philosophical implications (via a variant of the many-universes interpretation) and made it comprehensible to the general public, notably in his book The Fabric of Reality.
Contents |
In his 1997 book The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch details his "Theory of Everything." It aims not at the reduction of everything to particle physics, but rather mutual support among multiversal, computational, epistemological, and evolutionary principles. His theory of everything is (weakly) emergentist rather than reductive.
There are "four strands" to his theory:
Politically, Deutsch is known to be sympathetic to libertarianism, and was a founder, along with Sarah Fitz-Claridge, of the Taking Children Seriously movement. He is also an atheist.[3][4][5]
He was awarded the Dirac Prize of the Institute of Physics in 1998,[6] and the Edge of Computation Science Prize in 2005.[7] The Fabric of Reality was shortlisted for the Rhone-Poulenc science book award in 1998.[8]
Deutsch’s second book, The Beginning of Infinity, was published on 31 March 2011.