One year after the Nobel Prize: Anton Zeilinger’s voyage through quantum wonderland continues

Our quantum traveller’s interactions with people from all walks of life have renewed public interest in quantum physics and bolstered trust in Austrian science. The recognition has extended beyond academia, with quantum physics becoming a popular topic of conversation among the general public. Anton Zeilinger's Nobel Prize has certainly inspired and motivated the next generation of scientists in Austria and has positioned the country as a rising "science nation".

Some highlights in the last year were a visit to alumni in Innsbruck, where Anton Zeilinger received an honorary doctorate by the University of Innsbruck, and the well-attended plenary Nobel lecture at the American Physical Society's annual meeting in Las Vegas as well as at the joint meeting of the Swiss and the Austrian Physical Societies in Basel. On the science front, Zeilinger and his group are working on foundational experiments on random number generation from the early Universe’s microwave background, on long-distance quantum communication, and on the relation between quantum contextuality and nonlocality.

We end with Anton Zeilinger’s view of the world, as he himself phrased it in his Nobel speech:

“The separation between reality and information is artificial. Maybe we need a new concept that unifies the two.”