Meet our new professors
Terry Rudolph, Professor of Quantum Physics, Department of Physics
Abstract
Understanding physics is usually about telling stories of how and why stuff happens, and quantifying and confirming these tales with a mix of mathematics and observation. The case of quantum theory is anomalous because although we have the mathematics and observations, scientists struggle to find a ‘sensible’ underpinning narrative.
Should we care? Should we even expect the world to be amenable to the kinds of stories that satisfy some over-brained apes who think it’s very important to interact with things on the scale of bananas?
Smug philosophical superiority aside, it turns out that our best methods of engineering twenty first century quantum technologies exploit precisely this gap in the narrative that we have identified, and are guaranteed to be superior to those based on banana-scale physics!
Biography
Terry Rudolph was forced into a basic science degree by cruel parents, who failed to appreciate the merits of him becoming a pro squash player. Studying Physics and Mathematics (they seemed the hardest), he attended six lectures over three years. The final lecture, Advanced Quantum Theory, ruined Terry’s intellectual happiness (for 20+ years) by presenting a proof of quantum nonlocality.
A year of backpacking found him penniless and sleeping on a street in downtown Toronto, at which point a PhD seemed like a reasonable alternative.
Fortunately his PhD mother was extremely lax and let him study the nascent field of quantum information. As an early adopter little talent was required to become an expert, so he began teaching the topic at the University of Toronto. After time as a postdoc in Vienna and facilitating the collapse of Bell Labs’ basic research group from within, he came to Imperial on an Advanced Fellowship where he continued his exponential decay into a normal academic state.