The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Hard problems are usually not a welcome sight. But cryptographers love them. That’s because certain hard math problems underpin the ...

Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard were recognized for their foundational work in quantum information science.

Hard problems are usually not a welcome sight. But cryptographers love them. That’s because certain hard math problems underpin the security of modern encryption. Any clever trick for solving them ...

A small mathematical revision to quantum mechanics could effectively limit the purported infinite capacities of quantum computers—if validated, that is.

More than a century before quantum mechanics was born, Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton stumbled onto an idea that would quietly foreshadow one of the deepest truths in physics. While ...