All three recipients of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics are faculty members at the University of California. The Nobel Prize committee recognized John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for their work on “the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.”
Their research laid the groundwork for quantum computers, which are expected to significantly impact fields such as drug discovery, cybersecurity, agriculture, and energy.
John Clarke is an emeritus professor of physics at UC Berkeley. Michel H. Devoret holds a faculty position at both UC Santa Barbara and Yale University. John M. Martinis earned his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and is an emeritus professor at UC Santa Barbara.
“To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life,” said Clarke in a phone call with the Nobel committee during the press conference in Stockholm. He added that the possibility his work was Nobel Prize worthy “had not occurred to us in any way.”
UC President James B. Milliken commented on the significance of the award: “Their research has opened the door to the next generation of quantum technologies, including quantum cryptography, computers, and sensors — breakthroughs that will change how we do everything from discovering new drugs to stopping destructive cyberattacks.”
“With today’s recognition, Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis join a long line of esteemed UC faculty who have won a remarkable 74 Nobel Prizes, including 23 in physics,” Milliken said. “These awards are not only great honors — they are tangible evidence of the work happening across the University of California every day to expand knowledge, test the boundaries of science, and conduct research that improves our lives. I’m proud to see their work recognized.”
The pivotal experiments were conducted in the mid-1980s in Clarke’s lab at UC Berkeley when Devoret was a postdoctoral researcher and Martinis was a graduate student. Their studies focused on quantum tunneling—a phenomenon where particles pass through barriers that would be impenetrable in classical physics. While quantum tunneling had been observed at subatomic scales before, their experiments in 1984 and 1985 were the first to demonstrate this effect in a larger system: a superconducting electrical circuit.
By examining these circuits, they observed electrons behaving collectively as a single particle and moving through barriers within the system. This finding became fundamental for the design of quantum computers.
Quantum computers operate on qubits rather than traditional bits. Unlike conventional bits that can only be in one state at a time (zero or one), qubits can exist in multiple states simultaneously due to superposition and entanglement—principles derived from quantum mechanics. This allows quantum computers to perform complex calculations much faster than classical computers.
However, quantum states are fragile and easily disrupted by external factors like heat or light. Most quantum computers today use superconducting qubits maintained at extremely low temperatures for stability—a concept first described by Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis in their original work.
“This was the grandfather of qubits. Modern qubit circuits have more knobs and wires and things, but that’s just how to tune the levels, how to couple or entangle them,” said Irfan Siddiqi, chair of UC Berkeley’s Department of Physics.
Clarke’s career includes work on ultrasensitive detectors called SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices), used in applications ranging from biosensors to materials evaluation. He is also collaborating with the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX), for which he developed quantum amplifiers based on SQUIDs.
Martinis completed his doctorate at UC Berkeley in 1987 under Clarke’s supervision and later joined UC Santa Barbara. In 2014, he led a team at Google Quantum AI that built a quantum computer with 53 entangled qubits capable of solving problems beyond the reach of classical computers. He left Google in 2020 and now serves as Chief Technology Officer at Qolab.
“It is a great honor to be awarded the Nobel prize,” said Martinis. “I am grateful to have worked with John Clarke and Michel Devoret during my Ph.D. thesis, as they taught me how to do compelling experiments. The global physics community has also contributed greatly to the success of superconducting qubits. Next, let’s build a useful quantum computer!”
Devoret earned his doctorate in condensed matter physics from University of Paris, Orsay in 1982 and worked as a postdoc in Clarke’s lab at UC Berkeley before leading the Quantronics Group at CEA-Saclay in France and serving as a professor at Yale University. He currently teaches at UC Santa Barbara and is Chief Scientist at Google Quantum AI.
“I was thrilled to hear that the Nobel was awarded to John Clarke, John Martinis, and Michel Devoret, all of whom have been leading the second quantum revolution we are now enjoying,” said Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell. “John Clarke was a leading faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab for many years, supported by the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences program. This is great news.”
This year marks the centennial of quantum mechanics as first described by Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger in 1925. Olle Eriksson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, remarked: “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.”
This is only the second time three University of California faculty have received a Nobel Prize in one category; in 1995 three UC Irvine scientists were honored for their work on ozone-depleting chemicals.
Earlier this week, Frederick J. “Fred” Ramsdell—an alumnus of UC San Diego and UCLA—received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work on the human immune system.
Additional coverage is available from UC Santa Barbara (“UCSB physics professors John Martinis and Michel Devoret win 2025 Nobel Prize in physics”), UC Berkeley (“John Clarke, UC Berkeley emeritus professor, awarded 2025 Nobel Prize in physics”), and Berkeley Lab (“Former Berkeley Lab scientist John Clarke wins 2025 Nobel Prize in physics”).
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
