ABSTRACT

For millenniums, the fight has been raging on. Who will win? The code makers or the code breakers? The exciting history of cryptography, the art and science of secret writing, has taught us that code breakers have always won, sometimes with spectacular consequences ... at least until recently. But could it be that code makers will finally have the upper hand? For the benefit of the increasingly computerized society in which we live, let us hope so.

Biographical Notes

Gilles Brassard is both one of our great Quebec scientist and an outstanding scientific popularizer. Internationally, he is known as the co-founder of quantum cryptography (with Charles Bennett) and teleportation (with Claude Crépeau). He was named Personality of the Year in science and technology by the daily newspaper La Presse in 1995 and has received numerous honours among them ACFAS' Urgel-Archambault Prize in 1992, the Marie-Victorin Prize in 2000 and NSERC Award of Excellence in 2006.  His research lies at the crossroads of quantum mechanics and computer science.