In His Own Words: David Wineland

"Since winning the Nobel, I feel like I’ve been caught in a non-stop whirlwind.  As you might imagine, I will have many opportunities to speak in the future. I just hope I’ll be able to represent our field in a good way."

"I took my first class in physics as a senior in high school.  I really liked the idea that relatively simple math could be used to explain many of the things we experience in nature; I still like this aspect of physics."

"The Nobel Prize is a wonderful honor, but I don’t feel that special compared to the many other good people who are also trying to push the field forward.  And it certainly wouldn’t have happened for me without such great colleagues and continued support from NIST and other agencies over
the years."

"What’s next? The simple answer is more and better.  In quantum information, many physicists anticipate conducting an interesting quantum simulation—one where we will solve a problem that is intractable on a classical computer and/or tells us something new.  In the case of ions, hopefully our group can help find ways to increase the number of qubits that we can manipulate and reduce operation errors."