Seth Lloyd

Infobox Scientist
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name = Seth Lloyd


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birth_date = August 2, 1960
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residence = United States
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nationality = American
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fields = Physicist
workplaces = Massachusetts Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
Los Alamos National Laboratory
alma_mater = Phillips Academy
Harvard College
Cambridge University
Rockefeller University
doctoral_advisor = Heinz Pagels
academic_advisors =
doctoral_students = Daniel S. Abrams
Richard Joseph Nelson
Lin Tian
notable_students =
known_for = Studying limits of computation
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Seth Lloyd is a professor of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He refers to himself as a "quantum mechanic".

Lloyd was born on August 2, 1960. He graduated from Phillips Academy in 1978 and received his AB from Harvard College in 1982, his Math.Cert. and M.Phil. from Cambridge University in 1983 and 1984, and his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1988 (advisor Heinz Pagels) for a thesis entitled "Black Holes, Demons, and the Loss of Coherence: How complex systems get information, and what they do with it." After postdoctoral fellowships at the California Institute of Technology and Los Alamos National Laboratory, he joined MIT in 1994.

His research area is the interplay of information with complex systems, especially quantum systems. He has made contributions to the field of quantum computation and proposed a design for a quantum computer.

In his book, "Programming the Universe", Lloyd contends that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program. According to Lloyd, once we understand the laws of physics completely, we will be able to use small-scale quantum computing to understand the universe completely as well.

Lloyd states that we could have the whole universe simulated in a computer in 600 years provided that computational power increases according to Moore's Law. However, Lloyd shows that there are limits to rapid exponential growth in a finite universe, and that it is very unlikely that Moore's Law will be maintained indefinitely.

Lloyd is principal investigator at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, and directs the [http://www.rle.mit.edu/xqit Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory] (xQIT) at MIT.

Works

*cite journal
author = Lloyd, S.
date = 2000-08-31
title = Ultimate physical limits to computation
journal = Nature
volume = 406
pages = 1047–1054
url = http://puhep1.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/QM/lloyd_nature_406_1047_00.pdf
doi = 10.1038/35023282
*Lloyd, S., "", Knopf, March 14, 2006, 240 p., ISBN 1-4000-4092-2

* Interview: [http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lloyd2/lloyd2_index.html The Computational Universe: Seth Lloyd] (video), Edge Foundation

ee also

* Simulated reality
* "Quantum Aspects of Life"

External links

* [http://www.rle.mit.edu/rleonline/People/SethLloyd.html Personal web page]
* [http://www.pulse-berlin.com/index.php?id=144 "Crazy Molecules: Pulse Berlin Interview"]
* [http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/lloyd/ "Programming the Universe"]
* [http://www.twis.org/audio/2006/09/26/ Radio Interview] from This Week in Science September 26, 2006 Broadcast
* [http://genealogy.impa.br/id.php?id=123909 Lloyd's math genealogy]