Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded for Measurements on Individual Quantum Systems

I should have written a brief blog entry yesterday when the announcement was made, but here it is now.

Serge Haroche and Dave Wineland have won the physics Nobel Prize in 2012 for pioneering experiments that measure single quantum systems. This is important for quantum computing, among other things. John Preskill has described some of their work in this blog entry.

On my end, I'm happy to see a Nobel Prize for this topic (go quantum mechanics!) instead of particle physics and other things of that ilk. :)