John Preskill and Scott Aaronson: The Theorists Who Help Everyone Else Understand
Why two theorists belong in an industry guide
Hardware gets the headlines, but the field also needs people who say what a result really means. Two of the best known are John Preskill and Scott Aaronson. Both are academics, both are public communicators, and both are known for pairing real enthusiasm with a careful eye on hype. If you want to learn how to read a quantum announcement, learning how they think is a strong start.
Profiles on this site cover public professional activity only, drawn from the sources listed at the bottom. Nothing here suggests any person named has any connection to the QNT memecoin.
John Preskill
Per his Wikipedia entry, Preskill is the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and he has directed Caltech's institute for quantum information since 2000. It is now called the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter. He graduated from Highland Park High School in 1971, earned an A.B. in physics from Princeton in 1975 and a PhD in physics from Harvard in 1980, advised by Steven Weinberg. He became a Caltech associate professor in 1983 and a full professor in 1990. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (1991) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2014).
Two terms that stuck
The same source credits Preskill with coining quantum supremacy, in a 2012 paper titled Quantum computing and the entanglement frontier, and with the term noisy intermediate scale quantum, or NISQ, in a 2018 paper in the journal Quantum. The first names the moment a quantum machine does something no classical computer can do in reasonable time. The second describes the current era of machines with tens to hundreds of imperfect qubits. If you hear either term in the news, you are hearing his vocabulary. See supremacy and advantage and NISQ explained.
Many in the field now prefer the word advantage to supremacy, and the NISQ label is gradually giving way to talk of error corrected machines, which is a sign the field is advancing. See error correction in 2026.
Scott Aaronson
Wikipedia reports Aaronson as an American theoretical computer scientist born in 1981 who works in computational complexity theory and quantum computing. He earned a bachelor's degree in computer science at Cornell in 2000 and a PhD at UC Berkeley in 2004 under Umesh Vazirani. After postdoctoral work at the Institute for Advanced Study and the University of Waterloo, he joined MIT in 2007 and moved to the University of Texas at Austin in 2016, where he founded the Quantum Information Center. He holds a named chair in computer science there.
What he is known for
- Boson sampling: a proposal, developed with Alex Arkhipov, for a photonic experiment that would be hard for classical machines to simulate. It influenced several photon based advantage experiments. See photonic quantum computing.
- Complexity theory: work on classes such as PostBQP and on algebrization, which help map what quantum computers can and cannot do in principle.
- Communication: he co-founded the Complexity Zoo wiki, writes the blog Shtetl-Optimized and wrote the book Quantum Computing Since Democritus, based on a graduate course.
- AI safety: he announced in 2022 a one year stint at OpenAI on theoretical foundations of AI safety, and the article says he stayed two years.
His honors, per the same page, include the Alan T. Waterman Award (2012), the ACM Prize in Computing (2020), election to the US National Academy of Sciences (2026) and the inaugural Luca Trevisan Award for Expository Work (2026).
What to learn from them
- Ask what the speedup is against. A quantum result compared with a weak classical baseline is not a milestone.
- Ask whether the task is useful. A benchmark can be impressive science without being a product.
- Separate the physics from the market. A result can be real while a related stock or token moves for unrelated reasons. Nothing here is financial advice.
For a shortcut, see quantum computing myths and how to follow quantum news.
Why this is good news
A healthy field has builders and skeptical friends. The presence of respected, plain speaking theorists means the roadmap is being checked in public, which is how real progress gets confirmed. Quantum has both energy and scrutiny, and that is a strong combination.
Sources and further reading
Reported as of 2026-10-09. Titles and roles change, so check each person's own organization. This page is education, not financial advice, and it is not an endorsement of any person, company or asset. The QNT memecoin is an independent community project with no link to any person or organization named here, including Quantinuum Ltd.
Frequently asked questions
Who coined the term quantum supremacy?
John Preskill is credited with it, in a 2012 paper on the entanglement frontier. He is also credited with the term NISQ, from a 2018 paper.
Where does Scott Aaronson work?
He holds a chair in computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, where he moved from MIT in 2016.
Are these researchers affiliated with a quantum company?
This page does not claim any company role. Both are described by the cited sources as academics.
Do they endorse the QNT memecoin?
No. The token is an independent community project with no link to any person named here.
Keep reading
- NISQ Explained: Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Computers
What does NISQ mean? Learn why today's noisy, mid-size quantum computers are limited, what they can do, and how the field plans to move past them. - Quantum Supremacy vs Quantum Advantage Explained
What the terms quantum supremacy and quantum advantage mean, and why headline claims are often debated. - Quantum Computing Myths and Misconceptions
Common quantum computing myths, from 'it tries every answer at once' to 'Bitcoin breaks tomorrow'. Learn what is true, what is hype and what is still uncertain. - The People Leading the Charge in Quantum Computing
Researchers and executives who shaped quantum computing: Neven, Gambetta, Hazra, Devoret, Martinis, Shor, Preskill, Nayak, O'Brien, Gidney, Aspect and more.
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