Peter Williston Shor is a professor of applied mathematics at MIT. He is known for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially faster than the best currently-known algorithm running on a classical computer.
Quantum money is a cryptographic protocol where one party (the mint) can
prepare quantum states (each with a unique serial number) that can be
verified but not duplicated. We sketch our 2010 quantum money protocol
based on knot invariants and planar embeddings of knots, and sketch other
proposals for quantum money that have been made since then, including our
recent failed protocol.