The author of the post is Michael Nielsen, who coauthored the standard textbook on the subject. In fact, he says so in the first full paragraph: I worked on qu

The author of the post is Michael Nielsen, who coauthored the standard textbook on the subject. In fact, he says so in the first full paragraph: I worked on quantum computing full time for 12 years, wrote 60 or so papers, and co-authored the standard text. I was a grad student at Caltech when Michael was a postdoc there, and knew him from his reputation for general awesomeness long before I met him. N.B. Michael is also a frequent reader of Hacker News, so be nice. :-) (In fact, he submitted this article himself over a year ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289212 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289212)