Gilles Brassard was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1955. He received a Masters degree from the Université de Montréal in 1975, and obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in 1979, working in the field of cryptography with John Hopcroft as his advisor. He has been a faculty member of the Université de Montréal ever since, where he became Full Professor in 1988 and was given a Canada Research Chair in 2001.
Brassard is best known for his fundamental work in quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation, quantum entanglement distillation, quantum pseudo-telepathy, and the classical simulation of quantum entanglement. Some of these concepts are still theoretical, but others have been implemented in the laboratory.
In 1984, together with Charles H. Bennett, he invented the BB84 protocol for quantum cryptography. He later extended this work to include the Cascade error correction protocol, which performs efficient detection and correction of noise caused by eavesdropping on quantum cryptographic signals.
Brassard was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cryptology from 1991 to 1998. In 2000, he won the Prix Marie-Victorin, the highest scientific award of the government of Quebec. He was elected as a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research in 2006, the first Canadian to be so honored. In June 2010, he was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal, Canada's highest scientific honour. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.