$3m prize for ‘father of quantum computing’

Theoretical physicist David Deutsch, who is affiliated with the University of Oxford, along with three other researchers won the $3m Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics, the most lucrative prize in science. Deutsch, 69, became known as the “father of quantum computing” after proposing an exotic – and so far unbuildable – machine to test the existence of parallel universes. His paper in 1985 paved the way for the rudimentary quantum computers scientists are working on today.

A second prize went to Clifford Brangwynne at Princeton and Anthony Hyman at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, for discovering that proteins – the workhorses of cells – form teams that resemble flashmobs, with implications for neurodegenerative disease. A team at DeepMind in London scooped the third life sciences prize for AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence program that predicted the structures of nearly every protein known to science.