Quantum physicist and former President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) Anton Zeilinger is awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics together with OeAW member Alain Aspect and John F. Clauser. As the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced today, Zeilinger is receiving the world's most prestigious science award for his groundbreaking work on the quantum physical phenomenon of entanglement.
OeAW President Heinz Faßmann congratulates his predecessor in office: “Winning the Nobel Prize is a sensation and well deserved. Zeilinger has achieved groundbreaking results in his research area. Austrian research has joined the international elite again. This path should not be left now. The whole Academy is pleased for Anton Zeilinger today. I would also like to offer our warmest congratulations to our Member Abroad, Alain Aspect.”
About Anton Zeilinger
Zeilinger's scientific career has taken the Upper Austrian, who was born in 1945, to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, the Technical University of Munich and the Collège de France, as well as to Innsbruck as a Professor of Experimental Physics and as a Professor to the University of Vienna. His research focused on the field of quantum physical entanglement, the mysterious connection between two particles that assume an identical state regardless of their distance.
Here, Zeilinger gained insights that proved to be extremely valuable, not least for future applications such as quantum cryptography and the quantum internet. The physicist demonstrated this application potential in numerous experiments, such as in 2017 with the world's first quantum-cryptographically encrypted video call across two continents between Vienna and Beijing. Among the numerous prizes and awards Zeilinger has received for his work are the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art, the Descartes Prize of the European Commission, the Isaac Newton Medal (UK), the Order Pour le Mérite, the Israeli Wolf Prize and the Chinese Micius Prize.
About Alain Aspect
Alain Aspect, a member of the OeAW since 2009, has gained international recognition both within and outside the world of quantum physics for his experimental examination of the so-called Bell inequalities. After studying physics at the École normale supérieure de Cachan and the Université d'Orsay, the Frenchman, who was born in 1947, worked at Orsay University and the Collège de France, among others. Most recently, Aspect was a professor at the École Polytechnique and the Institut d'Optique, at the Université Paris Saclay, and a researcher at the Center national de la recherche scientifique.
This year's decision by the Nobel Committee makes Zeilinger the 23rd Nobel Prize winner from Austria. In the field of physics, Wolfgang Pauli was the last Austrian researcher to be happy about the prestigious distinction in 1945 – the year in which Zeilinger was born.