Clarke, Devoret and Martinis win 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Reuters

October 7, 2025 6:03 AM EDT Updated 10 mins ago


STOCKHOLM, Oct 7 (Reuters) - U.S.-based scientists John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for "experiments that revealed quantum physics in action", the award-giving body said on Tuesday. "This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has provided opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors," the prize-awarding body said in a statement.

The laureates carried out experiments with an electrical circuit in which they demonstrated both quantum mechanical tunnelling and quantised energy levels in a system big enough to be held in the hand, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
"My feelings are that I'm completely stunned. Of course it had never occurred to me in any way that this might be the basis of a Nobel Prize," Clarke told the Nobel press conference by telephone.

British-born Clarke is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. Devoret, born in France, is a professor at Yale University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, also in the United States, where Martinis is also a professor.

The Nobel physics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and includes a prize sum totalling 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million) that is shared among the winners if there are several, as is often the case.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/science/clarke-devoret-martinis-win-2025-nobel-prize-physics-2025-10-07/

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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2025 #NobelPrize in Physics 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."
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5:48 AM · Oct 7, 2025

Article updated.

Original article -

October 7, 2025 6:03 AM EDT Updated 1 min ago


STOCKHOLM, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Scientists John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit", the award-giving body said on Tuesday.

"This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has provided opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors," the prize-awarding body said in a statement.

All three winners are based in the United States.

The Nobel physics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and includes a prize sum totalling 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million) that is shared among the winners if there are several, as is often the case.

[ananda]

1. Berkeley is a great school.

When I was reading quantum physics books,
some of their grad students helped me with
questions on a forum they had created.

That forum includes other subjects as well.

We also had a great time doing haiku tags.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. In college as a chem major

I had to take 3 semesters of physics including "Elementary Particle Physics" as one of the courses which included this subject. My "Physical Chemistry" courses also delved into quantum stuff (unfortunately ). But before college, I remember reading Isaac Asimov's non-fiction subject matter books including his chem and physics ones, as he made (the "hard" ) sciences so accessible!

[ananda]

3. I really enjoyed the reading I did.

It helped validate my innate idea that
the world is holistic and not mechanistic
as Descartes and Newton wanted it to be.

I did my literature discussions mostly at
KDH, but I finally had to leave there because
the professor who owned and ran it was a
crazy fundamentalist xtian and the moderation
got really over the top.

However, fortunately, I managed to be able to
read and discuss a lot of books there and at a
couple of other sites.

What was so wonderful about it was that some
of the world's best minds came to these sites,
and my learning was exponentially improved
that way... people from Oxford, Sweden, India,
and so on.

One of the friends I made, and wrote poetry
tags with, is the great grand nephew of Nobel
Prize Winner Rabindranath Tagore.

Pure luck? Or not?

[BumRushDaShow]

4. The physics professor I had for my "Electricity and Magnetism" course

was British and did something wild on what was the first day of class (IIRC). He hauled out a large board covered in nails laid placed it on the auditorium stage floor and then donned a large (costume) "genie turban" and proceeded to lay down on his "bed of nails".

Well...

I know back in the day on the early (commercial) internet (circa the early-mid '90s), there were all kinds of USENET groups (and LISTSERVs) that had some fascinating discussions on science topics that I would peruse and/or subscribe to, and there were all kinds of folks posting on those.

[hunter]

5. I remember Google opened a huge archive of old USENET posts...

... much to the horror of those who had posted them, including myself.

Some of my early DU posts are pretty embarrassing too.

My Electricity & Magnetism professor was the nicest guy in the world, an excellent teacher, was cheerful and welcoming in his office hours, eager to help students who were having problems, but damn, he wrote the most difficult exams I've ever taken.

Straight A students who had made it that far by rote memorization and diligent study crashed and burned. If you didn't know the physics almost intuitively, in your guts, if you weren't willing to spend time in labs learning the stuff with your own hands, you were doomed to at best, a "C."

[hunter]

6. I don't think "quantum computing" is going to go anywhere.

I wouldn't invest any of my time or money into it. The rest of the work is important and the prize well deserved.

Once we get a better handle on the actual relationship between information theory and physics I suspect they'll turn out to be different aspects of the same thing and that "quantum computers" will turn out to be the more convoluted and difficult means of solving certain classes of problems. Digital computers largely replaced analog computers and we'll discover they can replace quantum computers too, which will give us new insights about the universe described by quantum physics.

These are, of course, the ramblings of a lunatic.