John Phillip Preskill was born on January 19, 1953. He is an American theoretical physicist and holds the title of Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology. At Caltech, he also serves as the director of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter.

Preskill is a scientist who actively works in the field of quantum information science and quantum computation. He is known for helping to create the term "quantum supremacy" and for introducing the term "noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ)" devices.

Biography

Preskill was born on January 19, 1953, in Highland Park, Illinois. He attended Highland Park High School, where he graduated as the top student in his class in 1971. Preskill graduated with the highest honors from Princeton University in 1975, earning an A.B. in physics. His senior thesis, titled "Broken symmetry of the Pseudoscalar Yukawa theory," was completed under the guidance of Arthur S. Wightman. Preskill earned his Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1980, with Steven Weinberg as his graduate adviser.

While still a graduate student, Preskill published a paper about the creation of superheavy magnetic monopoles in Grand Unified Theories. Since magnetic monopoles have never been observed, his work highlighted major problems in the scientific models of the universe at that time. These issues were later addressed by scientists like Alan Guth, who introduced the idea of cosmic inflation.

After working for three years as a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, Preskill became an associate professor of theoretical physics at Caltech in 1983. He was promoted to full professor in 1990. Since 2000, Preskill has served as the director of the Institute for Quantum Information at Caltech. In recent years, his research has focused on mathematical problems related to quantum computation and quantum information theory. He is known for creating the term "Quantum Supremacy" in a 2012 paper.

Preskill has gained attention in the media for participating in several bets with other physicists, including Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne. In 2004, Hawking agreed to the Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet and gave Preskill a copy of Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia.

Preskill was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1991 and became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.