All three recipients of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics are faculty members at the University of California. The Nobel Committee recognized John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for their discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.
Their research has played a key role in the development of quantum computers, which could solve problems beyond the reach of current computers. Quantum computing has potential applications in areas such as drug discovery, cybersecurity, agriculture, and energy.
John Clarke is an emeritus professor of physics at UC Berkeley. Michel H. Devoret is a professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara and Yale. John M. Martinis, who earned his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, is an emeritus professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara.
“To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life,” Clarke said during a phone call with the Nobel committee at the Stockholm press conference. He added that he had not considered his work as Nobel Prize worthy.
UC President James B. Milliken commented, “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.” He also noted, “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. 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 award-winning research began in the mid-1980s when Devoret was a postdoctoral researcher and Martinis a graduate student in Clarke’s lab at UC Berkeley. They explored quantum tunneling, a phenomenon where particles pass through barriers that would be impenetrable under classical physics. Their experiments in 1984 and 1985 demonstrated this effect in a superconducting electrical circuit large enough to be held in hand. This work showed electrons behaving as a single particle moving through barriers within the circuit.
This discovery laid the groundwork for quantum computing. Unlike conventional computers that use bits as their basic unit of information, quantum computers use qubits, which can exist in multiple states simultaneously due to superposition and entanglement. This allows quantum computers to perform many calculations at once, offering much greater computational power than traditional systems.
However, maintaining quantum states is challenging because they are sensitive to disturbances from heat, light, or motion. As a result, most quantum computers use superconducting qubits cooled near absolute zero. The structure and function of these qubits were first described by Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis at UC Berkeley.
Irfan Siddiqi, chair of UC Berkeley’s Department of Physics and former postdoctoral fellow in Devoret’s Yale lab, stated, “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. The basic idea that [these] circuits could be quantized and were quantum was really shown in this experiment.”
Clarke has also contributed to the development of ultrasensitive detectors known as SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices), which have applications in fields such as geophysics and biosensing. He is currently working with the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX), where he developed a low-noise superconducting quantum amplifier based on SQUIDs.
Martinis completed his doctorate under Clarke’s supervision at UC Berkeley in 1987 before joining UC Santa Barbara in 2004. In 2014, he led a team hired by Google Quantum AI to build a quantum computer capable of solving problems infeasible for classical computers. He left Google in 2020 and later co-founded Qolab.
“It is a great honor to be awarded the Nobel prize,” Martinis said. “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 received his doctorate from University of Paris, Orsay in 1982 before joining Clarke’s lab at UC Berkeley as a postdoctoral researcher. He later worked in France before joining Yale University as professor of applied physics from 2002-2024 and then joining UC Santa Barbara.
Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell commented on Clarke’s achievement: “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. 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.”
Olle Eriksson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, remarked on the centenary of quantum mechanics: “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 year marks only the second time three University of California faculty have won a Nobel Prize in one category; previously in 1995 three UC Irvine scientists received the chemistry prize for their work on ozone-depleting chemicals.
On Monday, Frederick J. Ramsdell — who earned degrees from UC San Diego and UCLA — received the 2025 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for research on the human immune system.
Further details can be found from UC Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley, and Berkeley Lab.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
