Charles H. Bennett, a research scientist and IBM Fellow, has been named a co-recipient of the 2025 ACM A.M. Turing Award by the Association for Computing Machinery, according to a March 18 announcement from IBM.
The award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize in computing,” recognizes Bennett’s contributions that helped launch the field of quantum information science and reshape how researchers approach computation and communication. He shares this honor with Gilles Brassard of the Université de Montréal, with whom he collaborated to merge physics and computer science into a new discipline.
Bennett’s career at IBM Research spans more than five decades, during which he explored how quantum mechanics could be used to process and transmit information in ways not possible with classical computers. His work laid the foundation for advances such as quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation, and entanglement distillation—concepts that are central to modern quantum computing.
Reflecting on his early influences, Bennett said: “I got to wondering about the connection between physics and computation, and whether there might be physical processes that are fundamentally uncomputable.” He credited his recruitment to IBM by physicist Rolf Landauer as pivotal: “Rolf Landauer recruited me to IBM because we shared an interest in the physics of computation.”
At IBM, Bennett authored a landmark paper in 1973 on logical reversibility in computation, showing that computation does not have to be tied inherently to energy loss. This work helped establish information as a physical concept. Later collaborations with Brassard led to breakthroughs such as the BB84 protocol—the first practical method for quantum cryptography—and experimental demonstrations using custom-built apparatuses.
Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow, said: “Charlie is an inspiration to all of us… That insight, and the decades of work that followed, helped lay the intellectual foundation for one of the most important scientific and technological frontiers of our time.”
IBM recently introduced an open supercomputing architecture designed for integrating quantum systems with classical resources and announced plans for IBM Quantum Starling—a large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer expected by 2029.
The A.M. Turing Award is named after Alan M. Turing and is considered computing’s highest honor. Bennett is now among seven IBM researchers who have received this recognition.
