Nobel Prize in Physics 2022

Nobel Prize for Anton Zeilinger and his revolutionary "crazy ideas"

3. October 2023 by Rudolphina

One year ago, on 4 October 2022, Anton Zeilinger (78) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, which he accepted in Stockholm on 10 December together with his colleagues Alain Aspect and John F. Clauser. Read and watch highlights of the eventful year here, with the award ceremony as, according to Zeilinger, "an unbeatable highlight".

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Interview with Anton Zeilinger

Prof. Zeilinger, how have things been for you since the announcement of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics?

Anton Zeilinger: Things have changed more than I expected. What's really nice is that every few steps on the street I'm briefly spoken to or smiled at by someone, and people are happy. You can see that the Nobel Prize is positive for many people in Austria. On the other hand, it is of course a burden when you can't just walk around.

What were the highlights of the past year for you?

Zeilinger: The Nobel Prize ceremony was the highlight, nothing can top that, that's for sure. But there were other nice things: the University of Innsbruck immediately awarded me an honorary doctorate, I was invited to give a plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) with 15,000 participants, and the state of Upper Austria awarded me the highest distinction in the country. I was able to invite 120 friends and relatives - a wonderful celebration.

I also remember meeting the US Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Barry Sharpless, who has been awarded his second Nobel Prize in 2022. When I asked him what his secret was, he said that he had never applied for research funding.

You said after the Nobel Prize announcement that science remains a big priority and that you want to continue researching. Did you succeed in doing that?

Zeilinger: Not quite as I had hoped, but I will take that up again now. I have to cut back on commitments in order to be able to devote more time to research.

Read the entire APA interview with Anton Zeilinger here (in German)

"Wiener Vorlesung" by Anton Zeilinger on 31 May: A journey through the Quantum Wonderland

In his "Wiener Vorlesung" on 31 May 2023, Anton Zeilinger followed up on his Nobel Prize speech given in Stockholm in December by addressing individual topics and aspects, including chance, entanglement and quantum encryption.

You can watch the stream of the lecture here (in German)

Impressions of the Nobel Prize lecture by Anton Zeilinger on 25 January at the University of Vienna

On Wednesday, 25 January 2023, physics Nobel Prize winner Anton Zeilinger took the audience on a journey through the "Quantum Wonderland" at a public lecture in the Audimax of the University of Vienna. Here you can find a review of the Nobel Prize lecture, photographic impressions of the event and voices from the audience (in German).

Impressions from the Nobel week 2022 in Stockholm

Illuminated City Hall in Stockholm during the Nobel Week Lights Festival

Nobel Week Lights Stockholm is a light festival that takes place during the Nobel Week in December and is free for everyone. Directly inspired by Nobel Prize-winning discoveries, works of art illuminate Stockholm's darkness. © Benoît Derrier

Anton Zeilinger together with other persons walking to the Museum

Anton Zeilinger on his way to the Nobel Prize Museum for the first day of the Nobel Week. © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin

Alain Aspect holding a signed chair.

Together with his fellow Nobel laureates Alain Aspect (in the picture, signing a chair at the Nobel Prize Museum) and John Clauser, Anton Zeilinger has already won a top prize once, the Wolf Prize 2010, and it was a special pleasure for him to see his companions again in Stockholm. © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin

Nobel Prize laureate John Clauser arriving at the Nobel Museum.

John Clauser arriving at the Nobel Prize laureates' Get together at the Nobel Museum. He shares this year's Nobel Prize in Physics with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger. © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin

Portrait of Anton Zeilinger at the Nobel Prize Museum

Anton Zeilinger at the laureates' Get together at the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm on 6 December 2022. © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Anna Svanberg

Anton Zeilinger und weitere Nobelpreisträger bei der PK in Stockholm

Anton Zeilinger and his fellow laureates in physics, chemistry and economic sciences answer questions from international media representatives at a press conference in the premises of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. © Daniel Hinterramskogler

Teilnehmer*innen der Pressekonferenz in Stockholm

"It is very important not to oversee that there is a future beyond the present future. You need to develop new fundamental experiments, new ideas, to open up possibilities for applications at a later time", says Anton Zeilinger at the press conference. © Daniel Hinterramskogler

Die Physiknobelpreisträger 2022 Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser und Anton Zeilinger

Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger - the three 2022 Nobel Prize laureates in physics - have been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science". © Daniel Hinterramskogler

Anton Zeilinger vor Gemälden früherer Nobelpreisträger

Thanks to Anton Zeilinger and his collaborators, the experimental test of Bell's inequality entered a new era, as Mats Larsson, Member of the Nobel Committee for Physics, stated in his Award Ceremony speech. "Even more importantly, they demonstrated how the elusive concept of quantum entanglement can be useful." © Daniel Hinterramskogler

Anton Zeilinger spricht am Podium

The Nobel Prize laureates are required “to give a lecture on a subject connected with the work for which the prize has been awarded according to the Nobel Foundation statutes." © Daniel Hinterramskogler

Blick ins Publikum der Nobel Prize Lecture

In his "Nobel Prize lecture in physics" in the Aula Magna of the Stockholm University, Anton Zeilinger talked about "A Voyage through Quantum Wonderland". © Daniel Hinterramskogler

Musicians performing at the 2022 Nobel Prize Concert

German soprano Diana Damrau, Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra performing at the 2022 Nobel Prize Concert, 8 December 2022. © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Niklas Elmehed

Nobel Prize laureates sitting around a round table

Since the 1960s, during the Nobel Week the Nobel Prize laureates have gathered for a round table discussion for television, Nobel Minds. The programme has a popular science approach and examines general questions related to science, research and literature. © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin

Lichtinstallation - rot und blau leuchtende Netzwerke

During all Nobel Week, the artworks and installations of Nobel Week Lights invited visitors to explore the city and the urban environment with new eyes, while learning more about Nobel laureates and their contributions. The photo shows the installation "CONNECTED" by Koros Design. © Benoît Derrier

Svante Pääbo with books in his hands.

Svante Pääbo, who was awarded this years' Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is a close research partner of Ron Pinhasi and Tom Higham and their teams at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna. Read more: rudolphina.univie.ac.at/en/nobel-prize © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Anna Svanberg

Portrait of Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry 2020, visit Nobel Week Lights. Charpentier habilitated at the University of Vienna and led a research group at the Max Perutz Labs at the University of Vienna from 2002-2009. © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin

Der schwedische König Carl XVI. Gustaf überreicht Anton Zeilinger am 10. Dezember 2022 in Stockholm den Nobelpreis.

On 10 December 2022, Anton Zeilinger receives the well-deserved prize from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Stockholm Concert Hall. "This [the demonstration that the concept of quantum entanglement can be useful] was a giant leap from Zeilinger's Austrian predecessor Schrödinger, and it is remarkable how the circle began in Austria and was closed in Austria. We have entered the second quantum revolution!", said Mats Larsson in his Presentation Speech announcing the Nobel Prize laureates in physics. © Daniel Hinterramskogler

The Nobel Prize awarded to Anton Zeilinger is a great personal success and, at the same time, a distinction for the academic location in general. My warmest congratulations to Anton Zeilinger.

Sebastian Schütze, Rector of the University of Vienna

Video recording of the Nobel Prize award ceremony on 10 December 2022

On 10 December 2022, quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger received the Nobel Prize in Physics. The award ceremony traditionally takes place on the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the founder of the most important science prizes in the world, in a festive ceremony in Stockholm. Watch the video recording here!

Nobel Week 2022: Live from Stockholm!

On our social media channels (Instagram, Twitter), Viktoria Kabel, PhD student in the Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics and Quantum Information group, reported directly from Sweden and provided exciting insights around the 2022 Nobel Prize ceremony: #followmetonobelprize

It is very important not to oversee that there is a future beyond the present future. You need to develop new fundamental experiments, new ideas, to open up possibilities for applications at a later time.

Anton Zeilinger at the press conference on 7 December in Stockholm

Video recording of the Nobel Prize lectures in physics on 8 December 2022

Watch the recording of the Nobel Prize lectures in physics on 8 December 2022 with Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, who took the audience on a journey through "Quantum Wonderland".

"One day, we will have really understood quantum physics ..."

"... which will be even more revolutionary than the achievements of Copernicus and Columbus," predicts the newly awarded Nobel Prize laureate Anton Zeilinger in front of a packed audience in the Ludwig-Boltzmann lecture hall at the University of Vienna. Today, all cameras are focusing on him: Together with his colleagues Alain Aspect and John F. Clauser, the Austrian physicist is going to be awarded the most important academic award for their groundbreaking findings in the field of quantum physics – this was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 5 October 2022.

Portrait photo of Anton Zeilinger in front of a blackboard full of formulae

Anton Zeilinger is considered a pioneer in the quantum information transfer using photons which is "fundamentally important in the transmission of information in quantum computers," explains the newly awarded Nobel Prize laureate. In the past decades, he achieved several breakthroughs in his discipline and has set transmission records. © Jacqueline Godany

Anton Zeilinger and audience in the packed Ludwig Boltzmann Lecture Hall on the occasion of the press conference on the day of the announcement of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics

Since the very beginning, Zeilinger was fascinated by experiments "that were completely counter-intuitive". Anton Zeilinger talks to the enthusiastic audience shortly after the announcement of the Nobel Prize laureates in an event organised at short notice by the University of Vienna and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQUI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. © University of Vienna

Illustration der drei Physiknobelpreisträger 2022

Anton Zeilinger and his co-laureates Alain Aspect and John F. Clauser have received another very prestigious award before – the 2010 Wolf Prize. Zeilinger is already looking forward to meeting his colleagues again at the award ceremony in Stockholm in December. © Niklas Elmehed Nobel Prize Outreach

The emeritus professor of the University of Vienna had been considered a likely candidate for the coveted award for quite some time, but when he actually received a phone call from Sweden he was still "very surprised", admits the 77-year-old Anton Zeilinger, "But there are so many others." What makes the 'quantum guru' with the bushy beard so special?

From fundamental questions to concrete applications

The Swedish committee declared that his pioneering work in quantum information and his experiments with entangled photons "bridged the gap between fundamental questions about nature and concrete applications". "Quantum physics will only actually be in full use if we no longer have to carry something like this around," Zeilinger counters and holds up his mobile phone. However, his personal focus has always been on basic research: "I can very proudly tell you: This is not good for anything. I only do it out of curiosity." This is what he has always replied to the question of "What is this good for?", Zeilinger tells the audience in the packed Ludwig-Boltzmann lecture hall at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Vienna at the press conference after the announcement of the Nobel Prize laureates.

Portrait photo of Anton Zeilinger in the laboratory looking out from behind a piece of research equipment

Anton Zeilinger thanks his family first and, immediately after, the European taxpayers and explains that this prestigious award is based on the opportunity to investigate the phenomena that really interested him early on, regardless of whether this would be of any "use". © Jacqueline Godany

How it all began…

And Anton Zeilinger has always been driven by curiosity: Already as a child, he used to "disassemble" things into their individual components to understand how they work – putting them back together afterwards was never as interesting, Zeilinger tells us. The exceptional physics talent was born on 20 May 1945 in Ried im Innkreis (Upper Austria) and grew up in a family in which science was valued. One of his teachers at the academic secondary school in Hietzing, Vienna, managed to stir students' enthusiasm for complex relationships: Five of 22 classmates, including Zeilinger, ended up studying physics. Zeilinger studied mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna and was "extremely lucky" that his doctoral supervisor was Helmut Rauch, the Austrian pioneer in the field of quantum optics.

"Crazy" revolutionary ideas

"I do not want to do any mainstream things," Zeilinger told the Austrian Press Agency in 2020. This has been his credo already early on. At the beginning of his career, many issues in the field were still "completely philosophical" and theories about quantum physical states were dismissed as "crazy ideas". But sometimes you need to "trust your intuition and your crazy ideas a bit," Zeilinger can proudly say today.

Video summary of the press conference with Anton Zeilinger (in German)

© Benjamin Furtlehner

Around the world

Just like Helmut Reich, Zeilinger initially worked with neutrons, but he soon focused on the investigation of fundamental questions in quantum physics. Following his habilitation at TU Wien and an appointment as research assistant at the Atominstitut Vienna, Zeilinger conducted research all over the world. Among other things, he was young Fulbright Fellow at the renowned M.I.T., where he also met future Nobel Prize laureate Clifford G. Shull.

Anton Zeilinger in front of a green board in the lecture hall describes with his hands what he is explaining (raised arms)

Farther and farther, higher and higher: From Clifford G. Shull, who received the Nobel Prize in 1994, Zeilinger has slowly but surely learned that "when you do something and believe that you are already happy with the result, it pays off to go into detail even further." Image: Zeilinger during a physics lecture targeted at the general public in 2013. © derknopfdruecker.com

The career of a distinguished expert

This is where he also began to focus increasingly on the quantum physics phenomenon of entangled photons and, together with his colleagues Daniel Greenberger and Michael Horne, he described the 'GHZ state' (in case you wonder: the name is derived from the initials of the physicists), which refers to the entanglement of three particles. The special thing about it: In contrast to the Bell inequalities, four measurements suffice to show the correctness of the quantum mechanics. It took until the late 1990s until Zeilinger and his colleagues succeeded in conducting the associated experiment – and, with it, in providing proof of the theoretical predictions. To this day, the GHZ experiment is considered one of the most important findings by Zeilinger.

Anton Zeilinger (centre) holding a model of the "Micius" satellite, with Rector Heinz W. Engl to his right.

In 2017, Anton Zeilinger, President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the time, and Heinz W. Engl, former Rector of the University of Vienna, held the first intercontinental quantum video conference using a model of the satellite 'Micius'. © ÖAW

But that was not all: In 1997, Zeilinger succeeded in the first teleportation of light particles, earning him the nickname 'Mr. Beam'. Also in 1997, he gave a demonstration of the encrypted transfer of money via quantum cryptography at Vienna City Hall and held the first secure quantum video conference with his colleague Chunli Bai in China. At the University of Innsbruck, he eventually initiated the experiments with entangled photons for which he will be presented the Nobel Prize in Physics in a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December 2022.

Anton Zeilinger at the ceremony marking the 650th anniversary of the founding of the University of Vienna

Special thanks go to Anton Zeilinger's team, which currently comprises around 200 employees all over the world. They are the ones working in the laboratories and taking care of the experiments with great commitment. Zeilinger thanks the University of Vienna for giving him the opportunity as part of his professorship to explore new paths again and to build on what he has started at the University of Innsbruck. Image: Anton Zeilinger on the occasion of the 650th anniversary of the University of Vienna in 2015. © derknopfdruecker.com

Following professorship positions in Innsbruck and Munich, he had been Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Vienna since 1999, and has been Emeritus Professor since 2013. As a result, his talk at the Ludwig-Boltzmann lecture hall of the University of Vienna, which was also broadcast via livestream, was a sort of 'home game': colleagues from the discipline, media representatives and admirers joined the students in the 'fan zone'. The strong interest in his person is probably not entirely new to the darling of the public and Austrian Wissenschafter des Jahres (researcher of the year) in 1996: The list of prestigious prizes Zeilinger received is long and ranges from the Wolf Prize in Physics to the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria. The highly endowed Nobel Prize is now certainly the culmination of Zeilinger's career.

As in the previous year, this year’s Prize is endowed with ten million Swedish kronor (around 920,000 euros). The 77-year-old quantum expert briefly considers his answer to a question from the audience about his plans for the prize money. Referring to his large family with children and grandchildren: "I'm sure to find someone," he smiles. (hm)

© Jacqueline Godany

© Jacqueline Godany

Anton Zeilinger studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna and wrote his doctoral thesis on Neutron Depolarization in Dysprosium Single Crystals under the supervision of Professor Helmut Rauch, and obtained his habilitation degree in 1979 at the Technical University of Vienna. He started his career in 1972 as a research assistant at the Atominstitut Vienna and was, among others, Fulbright Fellow at the M.I.T., working with the 1994 Nobel Prize laureate Clifford Shull. Furthermore, he was assistant professor at the Atominstitut Vienna, at the M.I.T. as well as TU Wien.

Following professorship positions at the Technical University of Munich and the University of Innsbruck, he had been Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Vienna since 1999, and has been Emeritus Professor at the University of Vienna since 2013. Furthermore, Anton Zeilinger has been conducting research at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2004, of which he was also the Director from 2004 to 2013. From 2013 to 2022, Zeilinger served as President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

This article was first published on 7 October 2022 and has been continuously updated.

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