Peter Knight on quantum technologies

About this episode

Professor Sir Peter Knight discusses the advancements in quantum technologies and the UK's role in this emerging field.

There are problems and tasks so hard and complicated that it would take today’s most powerful supercomputers millions of years to crack them. But in the next decade, we may well have quantum computers which could solve such problems in seconds. Professor Sir Peter Knight is a British pioneer in the realms of quantum optics and quantum information science. During his three decades as a researcher at Imperial College London, he has advanced our understanding of the physics which underpins how quantum computers work. Quantum optics was a new field of physics at the start of Peter Knight’s career in the early 1970s and he tells Jim Al-Khalili about the excitement and opportunities for a young scientist at the birth of a new scientific discipline. He also talks about the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme. Since his retirement in 2010, Peter Knight has been the driving force behind this £1 billion government-funded endeavour which has positioned the UK as a world leader in the development and commercialisation of quantum computing and other revolutionary quantum inventions. Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem A BBC Studios Production

People in this episode

Host: Jim Al-Khalili

Guest: Peter Knight

Topics covered

• quantum technologies
• quantum computing
• quantum optics
• scientific research
• UK National Quantum Technologies Programme

Keywords

• quantum technologies
• quantum computing
• quantum optics
• Peter Knight
• UK National Quantum Technologies Programme

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Imperial College London, UK National Quantum Technologies Programme, BBC Studios

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