The Big Deal About Quantum Computing

There is a pervasive idea right now, denigrating the whole notion of the heroic lone mind literally creating explanatory knowledge. The iconoclastic individual coming up with insight precisely because they insist they work best alone. Isaac Newton was one. Albert Einstein was one. Alan Turing was one. David Deutsch is one such as well. And in being so was able to bring the discussions around computation, its potential and its limits, then regarded as part of pure mathematics into physics. In doing so, invented the theory of quantum computation. This is the reason David won the breakthrough prize for his contributions to the foundations of that field.