Physics Nobel Prize awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis
Physics Nobel Prize awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis
The physics prize was announced Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 5:45 a.m. ET. The prize was awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”
Quantum mechanics is typically relegated to the microscopic realm, with effects that are profound but almost never observable in the tangible world. Using a specialized circuit called a Josephson junction, the trio were the first to demonstrate that quantum effects, such as quantum tunneling and energy quantization, can operate on macroscopic scales. Today, Josephson junctions have applications in quantum computing, sensing, and cryptography. These remarkable technological developments would not be possible without the laureates’ seminal 1985 work.
In the classical world, a ball bounces back after coming across a wall. But in the quantum world, in a process called quantum tunneling, a small particle can simply appear on the other side of the barrier, as if it had dug a tunnel. A Josephson junction is a macroscopic device that takes advantage of this effect: Despite a small gap between two conductors, electrons can still tunnel through the gap and create a current.
The team also demonstrated that the Josephson junction exhibited quantized energy levels — meaning the energy of the system is limited to only certain allowed values — confirming the quantum nature of the system.
Chemistry Nobel Prize awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar Yaghi
Chemistry Nobel Prize awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar Yaghi
The chemistry prize was announced Wednesday, Oct. 8, at 5:45 a.m. ET. The prize was awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar Yaghi “for the development of metal–organic frameworks.”
The laureates created and refined a new class of materials that have large empty spaces in their structure. The appeal of the materials, Physics Today’s Johanna Miller reported in 2017, “stems from their customizability: By choosing the right metal and organic units, one can independently tune the pores’ size, shape, topology, and surface chemistry.” In recent years, researchers have developed materials to extract water vapor and carbon dioxide from air, catalyze various chemical reactions, and serve other useful applications.
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This recognition of profoundly important work is especially noteworthy during our celebration in 2025 of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. It is meaningful to have a prize that recognizes the significance and pervasiveness of foundational quantum physics, and as we continue to celebrate IYQ, we will now double down on our celebrations owing to this wonderful recognition of truly transformative science.
Chief Executive Officer, AIP -
This year’s Nobel Prize in physics celebrates a profound achievement, demonstrating that the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics extend to systems visible on a human scale. The discoveries of John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis revealed quantum tunneling and energy quantization in superconducting systems, a breakthrough that laid the foundation for today’s quantum technologies.
Chief Publishing Officer, AIPP
Meet the Physics Laureates
Clarke’s research has focused on superconductivity and superconducting electronics, particularly the development and application of superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs). These ultrasensitive magnetic detectors became crucial tools for demonstrating that quantum mechanical effects — previously observed only at the atomic scale — could manifest in macroscopic electrical circuits. His work on SQUIDs revealed how quantum phenomena like energy quantization and tunneling could be harnessed in engineered devices, fundamentally bridging quantum theory and practical technology. His contributions span from the foundations of quantum devices to applications in quantum computing, medical diagnostics, and even the search for dark matter.
Clarke’s groundbreaking work has earned him numerous honors, including the Fritz London Prize (1987), the American Physical Society’s Joseph F. Keithley Award (1998), the National Academy of Sciences’ Comstock Prize for Physics (1999), the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society (2004), and the Micius Quantum Prize (2021). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (elected 1986) and the American Physical Society (elected 1985), and was elected a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2012.
During a postdoctoral stay in Berkeley, California, in 1982-1984 in John Clarke’s laboratory, Devoret measured the mesoscopic quantum levels of a Josephson junction for the first time. On his return to France, together with Daniel Esteve and Cristian Urbina, he founded the quantronics group at the Orme des Merisiers laboratory (CEA-Saclay). The group’s main achievements include the measurement of the traversal time of tunneling, the invention of the electron pump, direct observation of the charge of Cooper pairs and the development of a superconducting quantum bit, the first measurement of the effect of atomic valence on the conductance of a single atom, and the first observation of the Ramsey fringes of a superconducting artificial atom (quantronium). Devoret became director of research at the Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA) at Saclay. In 2007, he was appointed to the College de France, where he taught until 2012. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2003) and the French Academy of Sciences (2008), Devoret received the Ampere Prize of the French Academy of Science (together with Daniel Esteve, 1991), the Descartes-Huygens Prize of the Royal Academy of Science of the Netherlands (1996) and the Europhysics-Agilent Prize of the European Physical Society (together with Daniel Esteve, Hans Mooij and Yasunobu Nakamura, 2004). He is also a recipient of the John Stewart Bell Prize, which he received jointly with Rob Schoelkopf in 2013. In 2014, he was awarded, together with John Martinis and Rob Schoelkopf, the Fritz London Memorial Prize.
Currently, Devoret is the F.W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics at the Yale Quantum Institute, where he started a research program on amplification at the quantum limit and pursues research on experimental solid-state physics with emphasis on quantum mechanical electronics, as well as a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a member of the American Physical Society.
For his dissertation, Martinis’ interest had been piqued by a talk by Anthony Leggett on macroscopic quantum tunneling, speculating whether it can occur in macroscopic objects. This turned Martinis’ attention to studying tunneling in Josephson junctions, which he worked on with Clarke and Michel Devoret.
Martinis received his doctorate in 1987 and took a postdoctoral position at the Commisiariat Energie Atomic in Saclay, France, where he continued his work on the Josephson effect. He then joined the Electromagnetic Technology division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, and in 2004 he moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has specialized in quantum computing, demonstrating a variety of new devices and capabilities. In 2014, he joined the new quantum computing team at Google and was integral to the effort that resulted in Google’s “quantum supremacy” declaration in 2019. He returned to UCSB shortly thereafter. He is co-founder and currently chief technology officer of Qolab, which is focused on the development of superconducting qubits. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (elected 1997).
2025 Nobel Resources for Physics and Chemistry
Physics: By the Laureates
Physics: Quoted Laureates
Physics: About the Science
Physics: Past and Present Nobel Coverage
Chemistry: Past and Present Nobel Coverage
Physics: Oral Histories
Physics: ESVA Portraits
Physics: History Behind the Science
American Physical Society
Physics: John Clarke
Charlottesville revisited
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Frequency-tunable Kerr-free three-wave mixing with a gradiometric SNAIL
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Free-standing silicon shadow masks for transmon qubit fabrication
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AIP Advances 10, 065120 (2020)
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Demonstration of superconducting micromachined cavities
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Surface participation and dielectric loss in superconducting qubits
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Very low noise photodetector based on the single electron transistor
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Physics: John M. Martinis
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Strong environmental coupling in a Josephson parametric amplifier
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Quantum state characterization of a fast tunable superconducting resonator
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Multiplexed dispersive readout of superconducting phase qubits
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Planar superconducting resonators with internal quality factors above one million
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On behalf of APL Quantum, I congratulate John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis on the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics. Their demonstrations of macroscopic quantum tunnelling and energy quantisation in superconducting circuits proved that a macroscopic degree of freedom can behave as a single quantum system—laying the foundations for today’s circuit QED and superconducting qubit platforms.
APL Quantum seeks to bridge fundamental quantum science with quantum technologies. This prize exemplifies that arc: rigorous theory tied to experiment, transforming basic insight into an engineered quantum toolbox for various applications.
As we move from ‘science is quantum’ to ‘quantum is science and technology,’ this landmark achievement inspires us to champion contributions that are at once conceptually clear, experimentally exacting, and technologically enabling.
Editor in Chief, APL Quantum
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