- Person
- Richard Feynman
- Lived
- 1918–1988
- Field
- Physics
- From
- American
The story
Richard Feynman had been interested in computing since the Second World War. At Los Alamos he ran a group of human computers in the theoretical division and helped set up a system for doing calculations with IBM punched-card machines. By the late 1970s he had become fascinated by the deeper relationship between physics and computation.
He noticed a fundamental problem. Ordinary computers struggle badly when asked to simulate quantum systems, because the amount of information needed grows exponentially as more particles are added. As digital computers became faster, physicists still faced this explosive overhead whenever they tried to simulate quantum dynamics.
Feynman's answer was radical. He suggested that a computer built from quantum components, obeying the same strange rules as atoms and photons, could simulate quantum physics naturally and efficiently. Yuri Manin made a similar suggestion independently. Feynman set out his conjecture in 1982, and he is credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing as one of the first scientists to conceive of such machines. Around the same time, in 1980, Paul Benioff had described a quantum version of the Turing machine.
Feynman also had practical experience with advanced computing. In the 1980s he spent his summers at Thinking Machines Corporation, helping to build some of the first parallel supercomputers while considering how quantum computers might be constructed. He invented a new method of computing logarithms that he used on the company's Connection Machine. His lectures on the subject were later published as the Feynman Lectures on Computation.
His vision was decades ahead of the technology. He died in 1988, years before the field took off. In 1994 Peter Shor showed that a quantum computer could factor large numbers efficiently, and in 1996 Seth Lloyd proved that quantum computers could simulate quantum systems without the exponential overhead of classical machines, confirming Feynman's 1982 conjecture. A two-qubit quantum computer was demonstrated in 1998. Quantum computing is now a major field of research worldwide, though today's machines are still largely experimental.
Why it matters
Quantum computing is now a major field of research worldwide, with machines being built that may one day design new drugs and materials.
About Richard Feynman
Nobel laureate in physics; quantum electrodynamics, the Manhattan Project, beloved teacher and storyteller.
More about Richard Feynman
- Feynman offered $1,000 prizes for tiny machinesTo spur progress toward nanotechnology, Richard Feynman offered two $1,000 prizes for miniaturisation challenges. William McLellan and Tom Newman claimed them.
- Feynman showed why the Challenger shuttle failedOn the commission investigating the 1986 Challenger disaster, Richard Feynman dipped a sample of O-ring material in ice water on live TV to show it lost resilience in the cold.
- Feynman invented diagrams that physicists still useRichard Feynman devised simple pictures, now called Feynman diagrams, to represent the mathematics of how subatomic particles interact. They remain widely used today.
- Feynman explained the strange flow of superfluid heliumAt Caltech in the 1950s, Richard Feynman gave a quantum mechanical explanation of superfluidity, the frictionless flow of supercooled liquid helium.
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics inspired generationsIn the early 1960s Richard Feynman spent three years rethinking Caltech's introductory physics course. His lectures became The Feynman Lectures on Physics, a classic still read today.
- Feynman's 1959 talk launched the idea of nanotechnologyIn a 1959 Caltech lecture, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, Richard Feynman imagined machines and writing on the scale of atoms, introducing the concept of nanotechnology.
Sources
- Richard Feynman Wikipedia
- Quantum computing Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.