Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 winners
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics to three American scientists—John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis—for their groundbreaking work in quantum physics that has opened the door to a new generation of quantum technology.
The three laureates were jointly recognized “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”
The announcement was made today in Stockholm, marking the second Nobel award for the 2025 season.
The Pioneering Discovery
The winning research addresses one of the most fundamental questions in physics: How large can a system be and still exhibit the strange, counter-intuitive laws of quantum mechanics? These laws are usually reserved for the microscopic world of atoms and subatomic particles.
Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis, through a series of meticulous experiments, definitively proved that quantum effects can be harnessed and observed even in human-made electrical circuits. Their key findings include:
- Macroscopic Quantum Tunnelling: They demonstrated that an electrical current, within a specially designed superconducting circuit, could literally ‘tunnel’ through an energy barrier, moving from one state to another without having enough energy to cross the barrier—a feat impossible under classical physics but predicted by quantum mechanics.
- Energy Quantisation: They further showed that the energy levels within this macroscopic circuit were not continuous but existed in discrete, fixed ‘quanta’ or packets. This behavior, characteristic of quantum systems, proves that the circuit behaves as a single large quantum entity.
The Academy emphasized that this work provides the crucial scientific foundation for building practical quantum computers, quantum cryptography systems, and ultra-precise quantum sensors, thereby promising a revolution in computing and secure communication.
The Laureates and the Prize
The three recipients are distinguished researchers at top U.S. universities:
- John Clarke: University of California, Berkeley
- Michel H. Devoret: Yale University
- John M. Martinis: University of California, Santa Barbara
The laureates will share the prize sum of 11 million Swedish Kronor (SEK).
