Daniel Loss

Daniel Loss (born February 25, 1958) is a Swiss theoretical physicist and a professor of Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, the University of Basel, and Riken. With David DiVincenzo at IBM Research, he proposed the Loss–DiVincenzo quantum computer in 1997, which would use electron spins in quantum dots as qubits.

Loss was born on February 25, 1958, in Winterthur, Switzerland. He studied medicine at the University of Zurich for two years before transferring to physics. 1985 he obtained his PhD in physics in Zurich with a thesis on statistical mechanics under the supervision of A. Thellung. After postdoctoral stays in Zurich and at the University of Illinois in Urbana, where he worked with Anthony Leggett, he worked as a research scientist at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights. In 1993 he became professor at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada and since 1996 he is full professor at the University of Basel.

Loss' research concerns the quantum theory of condensed-matter- and solid-state physics. In particular, he studies spin- and charge-effects in semiconducting and magnetic nanostructures. He is one of the leading theorists investigating the realization of quantum information processing protocols in semiconductor structures. His 1998 paper (jointly with David DiVincenzo) proposing the use of spin qubits in semiconductor quantum dots is the foundation of one of the main approaches towards the realization of a quantum computer and has been cited more than 9,000 times. Further lines of research include decoherence, nuclear spin physics, magnon physics, topological matter, Majorana fermions and parafermions.

Selected honors and awards

2000: Fellow of the American Physical Society 2005: Fellow of the Institute of Physics, UK 2005: Humboldt Research Prize 2010: Marcel Benoist Prize 2014: Blaise Pascal Medal in Physics from the European Academy of Sciences 2014: Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 2017: King Faisal International Prize in Science (Physics) 2021: External scientific member of the Max Planck Society 2024: Jan Czochralski Award 2025: Clarivate Citation Laureates in Physics