APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research Talk: Three Seeds in the Flowering of Quantum Science

The award of the 2017 APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research attests to the vitality of our field and its appreciation by the broad physics community. Having watched the research evolve over many decades, I will describe how a few of today’s frontiers grew from tentative suggestions into flourishing fields of research. This talk is particularly aimed at newcomers who may be bewildered by the range of activities today and wonder how such things get started.