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David Deutsch | |
|---|---|
דוד דויטש | |
 Deutsch in 2017 | |
| Born | David Elieser Deutsch (1953-05-18)18 May 1953 (age 72)[3] Haifa, Israel |
| Education | William Ellis School |
| Alma mater | Clare College, Cambridge (BA) Wolfson College, Oxford (DPhil) |
| Known for | |
| Awards |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics Quantum information science |
| Institutions | University of Oxford Clarendon Laboratory |
| Thesis | Boundary effects in quantum field theory (1978) |
| Doctoral advisor | |
| Doctoral students | Artur Ekert[1] |
| Website | www |
David Elieser Deutsch (/dɔɪtʃ/DOYTCH;Hebrew:דוד דויטש; born 18 May 1953)[3] is a Britishphysicist at theUniversity of Oxford who is often described as the "father of quantum computing".[4][5][6] He is a visiting professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at theCentre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in theClarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field ofquantum computation by formulating a description for aquantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer.[7] He is a proponent of themany-worlds interpretation ofquantum mechanics.[8]
Deutsch was born to a Jewish family inHaifa,Israel, on 18 May 1953, the son of Oskar and Tikva Deutsch. David attended Geneva House school inCricklewood, London. His parents owned and ran the Alma restaurant on Cricklewood Broadway. He later attendedWilliam Ellis School in Highgate before readingNatural Sciences atClare College, Cambridge, and takingPart III of the Mathematical Tripos. He went on toWolfson College, Oxford for his doctorate intheoretical physics[2] onquantum field theory incurved space-time,[9] supervised byDennis Sciama[1] andPhilip Candelas.[2]
His work onquantum algorithms began with a 1985 paper, expanded withRichard Jozsa in 1992, to produce theDeutsch–Jozsa algorithm, one of the first examples of a quantum algorithm that is exponentially faster than any possible deterministic classical algorithm.[7] In his nomination for election as aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2008, his contributions were described as:[10]
[having] 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 bookThe Fabric of Reality.
Since 2012,[11] he has been working onconstructor theory, an attempt at generalising the quantum theory of computation to cover not just computation but all physical processes.[12][13] Together withChiara Marletto, he published a paper in December 2014 entitled "Constructor theory of information", which conjectures that information can be expressed solely in terms of which transformations of physical systems are possible and which are impossible.[14][15]
In his 1997 bookThe Fabric of Reality Deutsch details his views onquantum mechanics[16] and explains his "Theory of Everything". It aims not at the reduction of everything to particle physics, but rather mutual support amongmultiversal, computational, epistemological and evolutionary principles. His theory of everything is somewhatemergentist rather thanreductive. There are four strands to his theory:
In a 2009TED talk, Deutsch expounded a criterion for scientific explanation, which is to formulateinvariants: "State an explanation publicly, so that it can be dated and verified by others later, that remains invariant [in the face of apparent change, new information, or unexpected conditions]".[17]
Invariance as a fundamental aspect of a scientific account of reality has long been part of philosophy of science: for example, Friedel Weinert's bookThe Scientist as Philosopher (2004) noted the presence of the theme in many writings from around 1900 onward, such as works byHenri Poincaré (1902),Ernst Cassirer (1920),Max Born (1949 and 1953),Paul Dirac (1958),Olivier Costa de Beauregard (1966),Eugene Wigner (1967),Lawrence Sklar (1974),Michael Friedman (1983),John D. Norton (1992),Nicholas Maxwell (1993),Alan Cook (1994),Alistair Cameron Crombie (1994),Margaret Morrison (1995),Richard Feynman (1997),Robert Nozick (2001) andTim Maudlin (2002).[18]
Deutsch's second book,The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World, was published on 31 March 2011. In this book, he views the BritishEnlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries as near the beginning of a potentially unending sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. He examines the nature of knowledge,memes, and how and whycreativity evolved in humans.[19]
The Fabric of Reality was shortlisted for theRhone-Poulenc science book award in 1998. Deutsch was awarded theDirac Prize of theInstitute of Physics in 1998,[20] and the Edge of Computation Science Prize in 2005.[21] In 2017, he received theDirac Medal of theInternational Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).[22] Deutsch is linked toPaul Dirac through his doctoral advisorDennis Sciama, whose doctoral advisor was Dirac. Deutsch was elected afellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2008.[10] In 2018, he received theMicius Quantum Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the Isaac Newton Medal and Prize.[23] On September 22, 2022, he was awarded theBreakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, shared withCharles H. Bennet,Gilles Brassard andPeter Shor.[24]
Deutsch is a founding member of the parenting and educational methodTaking Children Seriously.[25]
Deutsch describes antisemitism as a recurring pattern of irrational thinking, present in many cultures, whose function is to justify harming Jews simply for being Jews.[26][27] He argues that "the pattern" persists because, when old justifications for hating Jews lose relevance, new ones are invented to take their place.[28][27] Deutsch compares this phenomenon to the way gold retains its high value, not because of any inherent quality, but because people know that other people value it.[27] He regards Zionism as the contemporary Jewish response to this pattern and identifies himself as an atheist Zionist.[26][29]
Deutsch supportedBrexit, with his advocacy quoted by then-government adviser,Dominic Cummings, and reported byThe New Yorker in January 2020.[30]
Michael Gove mentioned Deutsch's viewpoint during a BBC Brexit debate. Regarding the debate, Deutsch later commented:
In Britain there is a clear path if you have a grievance, you can join a pressure-group, the pressure-group will pressure the government, or you can see your MP, and the MP will see the grievance building up, and so-on. Whereas, Europe is structured in such a way that it's very difficult to know whom to address your grievance to, or what they could do about it.[31]
Deutsch was not involved in any campaign advocacy for Brexit. His public remarks on the subject were quoted by Cummings and Gove on their own initiative, as Deutsch later made clear.[31]: 00:28 [32]: 00:10
had absolutely no effect on the campaign