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John Preskill [photo credit: CALTECHTwo phrases now shape every serious conversation about quantum computing \u2014 when it will arrive, what it can do, how close the machines are to working. Both were coined by the same person, in the same building, on a campus a few blocks from Colorado Boulevard.<\/p>\n
Quantum Zeitgeist, an international publication covering the quantum computing industry, published a feature profile on July 1 crediting Caltech theoretical physicist John Preskill with providing the field its defining vocabulary: \u201cquantum supremacy,\u201d the term for the moment a quantum computer outperforms any classical machine, and \u201cNISQ,\u201d short for noisy intermediate-scale quantum, the label scientists and companies use for today\u2019s generation of still-imperfect quantum devices.<\/p>\n
The profile, published under the outlet\u2019s \u201cQuantum People\u201d section, describes Preskill as having \u201cdone more than almost anyone to give quantum computing its language,\u201d according to the publication.<\/p>\n
Preskill, 73, has worked at Caltech\u2019s Pasadena campus since 1983. He holds the Richard P. Feynman Professorship of Theoretical Physics and the Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair of the Institute for Quantum Science and Technology.<\/p>\n
He first used the term \u201cquantum supremacy\u201d in an October 2011 talk at the 25th Solvay Conference on Physics in Brussels, later publishing the concept in a 2012 paper. He introduced NISQ in a 2018 paper in the journal Quantum.<\/p>\n
Both terms stuck. When Google claimed in 2019 that its 54-qubit processor had achieved quantum supremacy, the debate that followed used Preskill\u2019s framing. Researchers worldwide now describe their hardware as \u201cNISQ-era\u201d devices, a phrase lifted directly from his work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI proposed the term \u2018quantum supremacy\u2019 to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can\u2019t, regardless of whether those tasks are useful,\u201d Preskill wrote in Quanta Magazine in 2019.<\/p>\n
Preskill did not start in quantum computing. He earned his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1980 under Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, studying particle physics and cosmology. His early work on magnetic monopoles helped motivate the theory of cosmic inflation.<\/p>\n
He shifted in the mid-1990s, drawn by Peter Shor\u2019s 1994 discovery of a quantum algorithm for factoring large numbers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realized with the discovery of Shor\u2019s algorithm that it really meant there was a big difference between what problems we\u2019d be able to solve and which ones we\u2019d never be able to solve with computing technology because it\u2019s a quantum world instead of a classical one,\u201d Preskill said in an oral history conducted for the American Institute of Physics, as quoted by Caltech Magazine.<\/p>\n
In 2000, he founded the Institute for Quantum Information at Caltech, the precursor to today\u2019s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center. The institute celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2025.<\/p>\n
Preskill remains active. In 2025, he published a paper in ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing proposing the \u201cmegaquop machine\u201d \u2014 a quantum computer capable of roughly one million reliable logical operations \u2014 as a milestone for the post-NISQ era. In July 2026, he co-authored a paper with researchers from MIT and Google Quantum AI establishing criteria for verifiable quantum advantage.<\/p>\n
His credentials extend beyond publications. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of the 2024 John Stewart Bell Prize. In 2022, he was appointed to the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, the federal body advising the White House on the direction of American quantum research.<\/p>\n
Quantum Zeitgeist, which publishes daily news and analysis for researchers, engineers, investors, policymakers, and technology leaders, was founded in 2018 and operates as an independent outlet. The publication\u2019s profile of Preskill traced his career from Highland Park, Illinois, through Princeton and Harvard to his four-decade tenure at Caltech.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompanies are now pursuing ambitious plans to build the world\u2019s most powerful quantum computers,\u201d Preskill said in remarks at the 2025 Quantum World Congress, where he received the Academic Pioneer in Quantum Award. \u201cLet\u2019s not forget how we got to this point. It was by allowing some of the world\u2019s most brilliant people to follow their curiosity and dream about what the future could bring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Preskill\u2019s office sits in the Annenberg Center at Caltech \u2014 the same campus where Richard Feynman, the physicist for whom Preskill\u2019s chair is named, first envisioned quantum computers more than four decades ago. The vocabulary the field uses to measure how far it has come since was built there, too.<\/p>\n
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