Colloquium by Charlie Bennett, Fellow of IBM

Title: Stephen Wiesner (1942-2021) and the Birth of Quantum Information Science

By thinking about how to do two simple but classically-impossible tasks: making impossible-to-counterfeit money, and multiplexing two messages into a signal whose receiver can recover either one but not both, Wiesner triggered a reconceptualization of information whose mathematical, physical, and practical consequences are still being discovered, and the gist of whose strange beauty is within the grasp of any educated person.

The talk is followed by a reception in the 4th floor lunch room.