2025 Nobel Prize in Physics: Devoret, Martinis & Clarke
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics to Michel H. Devoret (Google’s Chief Scientist of Quantum Hardware), John M. Martinis (former Google employee) and John Clarke of UC Berkeley “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.” Their work on Josephson junctions laid the foundation for today’s superconducting qubits used in quantum computing.
Why it matters
- The 1984–85 experiments with Josephson junctions demonstrated macroscopic quantum tunnelling and energy quantisation in electrical circuits — key phenomena enabling superconducting qubits.
- These discoveries directly influenced the development of modern quantum processors and companies’ research into quantum computing, including Google’s Quantum AI efforts and the Willow chip announced by Google.
Quotable
“It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises… It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation of all digital technology.” — Olle Eriksson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics
Sources & further reading
- Nobel Prize 2025 press release
- Nobel Prize — Physics 2025
- Google Quantum AI — Willow quantum chip (Google blog)
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