Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain (born on October 11, 1965), called Ignacio Cirac, is a Spanish physicist. He is one of the early leaders in the field of quantum computing and quantum information theory. He received the 2013 Wolf Prize in Physics.
Career
Juan Ignacio Cirac moved to the United States in 1991 to work as a research scientist with Peter Zoller at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. From 1991 to 1996, he taught physics at the Faculty of Chemistry in Ciudad Real, part of the University of Castilla-La Mancha.
In 1996, Cirac became a professor at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Innsbruck, Austria. In 2001, he was named director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, where he leads the Theory Division. At the same time, he was appointed as an honorary professor at the Technical University of Munich.
Since 2002, Cirac has served as a visiting professor and research advisor at ICFO, the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona. He has worked with research teams at Harvard University, the Technical University of Munich, the University of Hamburg, UCSB, the University of Hannover, the University of Bristol, the University of Paris, CEA/Saclay, École Normale Supérieure, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His research focuses on quantum optics, the quantum theory of information, and quantum many-body physics. His work with Peter Zoller on ion trap quantum computation helped make experimental quantum computation possible. His research on optical lattices started the field of quantum simulation. He has made important contributions to quantum information theory, degenerate quantum gases, quantum optics, and renormalization group methods. As of 2017, Cirac has published over 440 articles in top scientific journals and is one of the most cited researchers in his fields. He has been considered a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Other activities
- Telefónica, member of the board (since 2016)
- La Caixa Foundation, member of the advisory council (since 2015)
- Annalen der Physik, member of the advisory board (since 2012)
- BBVA Foundation, member of the scientific committee (since 2010)
Honors and awards
In 2003, Cirac was chosen as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2017, he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
He has received many awards, including the 2006 Prince of Asturias Award, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category shared with Peter Zoller, and The Franklin Institute's 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics (shared with David J. Wineland and Peter Zoller). He was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics with Peter Zoller in 2013. In 2018, he received the Max Planck Medal from the German Physical Society and the Micius Quantum Prize.
In 2023, he was given the first La Vanguardia Prize in the category "Innovation."