2021

Review of the year

following year. He became vice-president

of USTC in 2014.

Pan’s work has yielded huge results –

it has been cited in nearly 50,000 other

scientific papers – and has in turn led to a

lot of  government investment. A quantum

laboratory that was opened at USTC in 2020

cost a reported $10 billion. Such backing has

yielded big results of late.

Tech giants and research teams around the

world have been in a race to outdo each other

when it comes to quantum supremacy, the

point at which a quantum computer can solve

a problem that is impossible for classical

computers. In July 2021, USTC announced it

had surpassed Google’s claimed quantum

supremacy achievement by solving a problem

three orders of magnitude harder than that

performed by Google’s Sycamore machine. In

September, USTC bested its own benchmark

by another three orders of magnitude.

G

OVERNMENTS and companies around the

world are racing to build a useful quantum

computer, and the stakes are as high as the

R&D budgets. Such a machine could crack

encryption wide open, boost the power of

artificial intelligence and help develop

unique materials and drugs.

A big player in the field is China, which

has a centralised and extremely well-funded

government project hoovering up talent, all

under the oversight of one man: Jian-Wei Pan.

The same words crop up repeatedly when

you discuss Pan with those who know him:

reserved, focused, driven and bright. He is

often referred to as the “father of quantum”.

He attended the University of Science and

Technology of China (USTC) in 1987 and later

the University of Vienna in Austria for his

doctorate, ultimately returning to USTC to

run one of the largest and most successful

quantum research groups in the world. In

Vienna, he worked under the prominent

physicist Anton Zeilinger, who later said:

“I can’t imagine the emergence of quantum

technology without Jian-Wei Pan.”

Gregor Weihs at the University of Innsbruck,

also in Austria, worked with Pan in Vienna

and recalls his time there. “Initially he didn’t

have any experimental experience, but it

was obvious that he understood quantum

physics better than any of us, and had

amazingly creative ideas,” he says.

“He was certainly driven and motivated

to build bigger things,” says Thomas

Jennewein at the University of Waterloo

in Canada, who also worked with Pan

in Vienna and helped him set up a new

quantum research lab at USTC in 2002.

After returning to China, Pan had a meteoric

rise. He was elected to the Chinese Academy

of Sciences in 2011, its youngest ever member,

and the World Academy of Sciences the

Profile

The man leading China’s

quantum computing mission

The nation’s world-beating quantum technology is largely

credited to Jian-Wei Pan, reports Matthew Sparkes

THIS year, the extraordinarily

wealthy flocked to space. After

decades of deferred promises, the

space tourism industry got going in

earnest, beginning with short flights

aboard privately funded craft.

Three different commercial

ventures carried ultra-rich

passengers into space in 2021. It

began with Richard Branson, who

took a 90-minute suborbital flight

aboard his Virgin Galactic space plane,

SpaceShipTwo, on 11 July. Whether or

not the flight counts as having gone to

space, though, remains a contentious

subject – the US government defines

space as beginning 50 miles (or just

over 80 kilometres) up, which was

the altitude of Branson’s flight, but

the internationally held definition

of space, the Kármán line, is

100 kilometres above Earth.

Following the US government

definition, Branson was the first

Space tourism is go – for

the billionaires, anyway

Space travel

New Shepard’s first crew

and capsule (top); Virgin

Galactic’s craft and flyers

XIN

HU

A/A

LA

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24 | New Scientist | 18/25 December 2021