Three U.S.-based physicists — John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis — have won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for groundbreaking experiments that showed quantum mechanics at work in electrical circuits large enough to be seen and measured.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award on Tuesday, recognizing the trio “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”
Their pioneering work in the 1980s demonstrated that the bizarre principles of quantum mechanics — normally seen only in atoms and tiny particles — could also apply to larger, man-made systems under the right conditions.
Quantum Effects On A Human Scale
Quantum tunnelling is one of the strangest effects in physics: it allows particles to slip through barriers that, by classical logic, should stop them. Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis built a superconducting circuit — cooled to near absolute zero — where this quantum phenomenon could appear in measurable, man-made systems.
By using Josephson junctions — two superconductors separated by a thin insulator — they showed that electrical current could “tunnel” through the barrier, revealing unmistakably quantum behavior in a macroscopic system. Even more remarkably, the circuits also absorbed and released energy only in fixed amounts, or “quanta,” just as theory predicted.
“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,” said Olle Eriksson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, in a press statement.
Laying The Groundwork For The Quantum Future
The laureates’ pioneering experiments have paved the way for superconducting quantum circuits, which today form the backbone of efforts to build quantum computers, quantum sensors, and secure quantum communication systems.
Quantum computers use units called qubits that can exist in multiple states simultaneously — enabling them to process vast amounts of information and solve certain problems faster than classical computers.
Today’s leading tech firms, including Google and IBM, use superconducting qubits — a direct descendant of the systems Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis helped invent — in the race to build the world’s first practical quantum computer.
Beyond computing, their discoveries also fuel the opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors.
“The surprise of my life”
Speaking after the announcement, John Clarke, a British-born professor of the University of California, Berkeley, said he was “completely stunned” by the honor.
“Of course it had never occurred to me in any way that this might be the basis of a Nobel Prize. To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life,” Clarke told the Nobel news conference over his telephone. “One of the underlying reasons that cellphones work is because of all this work.”
He also praised his co-winners, saying, “Their contributions are just overwhelming.”
Michel Devoret, a French-born professor at Yale University and Chief Scientist at Google Quantum AI, and John Martinis, formerly head of Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, which in 2019 claimed to have achieved “quantum supremacy”, were equally surprised and delighted at being awarded the Nobel Prize.
Paving The Way For The Quantum Age
The trio will equally share the 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1.17 million) prize. It will be presented by the King of Sweden at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.
This year’s Nobel Prize marks a turning point — celebrating how quantum theory leaped from abstract science to real-world technology, shaping the foundation of today’s and tomorrow’s computing revolution.
