Populated by programmers worrying about fixes for the latest operating systems and rollouts of new applications, a software company might seem an odd place for rethinking the very foundations of computation. But at Microsoft Research, Michael Freedman is doing just that. One of the world's most heralded mathematicians and a 1986 winner of the Fields Medal-math's equivalent of a Nobel Prize-Freedman is spending his days pondering one of the toughest puzzles in physics: how to transform quantum computing from an abstract dream into a feasible technology. And he believes he may have found a solution.

Select from the choices above to read the entire article.