Article content continued

“Maybe we’ll find the quantum equivalent of a catalyst [a chemical agent that speeds reactions, useful in industry], that allows us to grow material,” he said. “What if you could make metals transparent?” Or suppose you could grow diamond, among the hardest materials known, as indeed researchers are doing — slowly, atom by atom — in a lab near his office on the northern campus of the University of Waterloo.

“How would that change architecture?” he said. “How would that change bridge production?”

“A bridge of diamond,” he says, nodding to affirm the dream. “This is verging on science fiction and what I’m going to tell you is, even this is probably not crazy enough … In a sense [investing in quantum] was a bet, because you’re betting against the prevailing culture, the prevailing idea, the prevailing attitudes.”

Now, with progress, his quantum bet, measured in hundreds of millions, looks more like an investment.

“What you’re looking for is exponential growth,” he said. “Linear growth is boring. Anything you can predict is linear. What you really want is, you want to think about, well, you want to hope that no matter how wild your thinking is, it’s not wild enough.”

He said he is comfortable in this realm of uncertainty, putting a fortune on technology that has not been invented yet, barely dreamed, if at all.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s the best part … The most boring thing in the world would be if we did all these experiments and we got nothing new, we just verified everything we predicted.”