David Elieser Deutsch FRS (born 18 May 1953) is a British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford. He pioneered the field of quantum computation by formulating a description for a quantum Turing machine, as well as specifying an algorithm designed to run on a quantum computer. He has also proposed the use of entangled states and Bell's theorem for quantum key distribution and is a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
In his 1997 book The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch details his "Theory of Everything". It aims not at the reduction of everything to particle physics, but rather mutual support among multiversal, computational, epistemological, and evolutionary principles. His theory of everything is somewhat emergentist rather than reductive.
Deutsch's second book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World, was published on 31 March 2011. In this book, he views the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries as near the beginning of a potentially unending sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. He examines the nature of knowledge, memes, and how and why creativity evolved in humans.
The Fabric of Reality was shortlisted for the Rhone-Poulenc science book award in 1998. Deutsch was awarded the Dirac Prize of the Institute of Physics in 1998, and the Edge of Computation Science Prize in 2005. In 2017, he received the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). Deutsch is linked to Paul Dirac through his doctoral advisor Dennis Sciama, whose doctoral advisor was Dirac. Deutsch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2008. In 2020 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Cybernetics Society. In 2018, he received the Micius Quantum Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the Isaac Newton Medal and Prize.
On September 22, 2022, he was awarded with the Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics (sharing it with 3 others)