English

Brief History of Quantum Cryptography: A Personal Perspective

Quantum Physics 2016-11-18 v1

Abstract

Quantum cryptography is the only approach to privacy ever proposed that allows two parties (who do not share a long secret key ahead of time) to communicate with provably perfect secrecy under the nose of an eavesdropper endowed with unlimited computational power and whose technology is limited by nothing but the fundamental laws of nature. This essay provides a personal historical perspective on the field. For the sake of liveliness, the style is purposely that of a spontaneous after-dinner speech.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0604072,
  title  = {Brief History of Quantum Cryptography: A Personal Perspective},
  author = {Gilles Brassard},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0604072},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

14 pages, no figures

R2 v1 2026-07-22T19:54:32.756Z