Three California-based researchers have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics. Michel Devoret and John Martinis are professors at UC Santa Barbara, while John Clarke is at UC Berkeley.
The Nobel Prize committee honored them for their groundbreaking research in the 1980s into quantum mechanics, a complex field that plays a crucial role in the electronics we use daily.
Martinis admitted that Tuesday’s Nobel Prize announcement came as a big surprise.
“I went to sleep (Monday night), but my wife was reading a really nice novel, and she stayed up until 3 a.m.,” said Martinis. “All of a sudden, the phone started ringing. She answered it and found out what was going on. But, she let me sleep in until 5:30. She woke me up, and I looked on the internet. Since then, it’s been constant phone calls and emails. The most special thing is to hear from old students, how they took a class and liked it. That’s been really nice."
Martinis recalled their research.
“When we did these experiments, I was a graduate student with John Clarke at UC Berkeley. Michel Devoret was a postdoc. It was a fantastic experience to be mentored by two great physicists. We all had our own unique way we did things, but I learned so much from them."
Their work showed that electrical circuits large enough to be seen with the naked eye could still exhibit quantum behavior. It set the stage for the construction of artificial atoms and paved the way for the quantum research we see today.
At a UCSB news conference to celebrate the Nobel Prize announcement, Martinis stated that he and his fellow researchers knew they'd made a significant find, but didn’t realize how important it would be.
He said his dream is to have their discoveries help develop a quantum computer capable of real-world applications. They believe it would be able to perform some calculations exponentially faster than traditional computers.
“We thought it (the research) was pretty exciting, and good for the time," Martinis added. "I think it’s only because of the tremendous amount of work that has been done to try to build a quantum computer that the importance of this really came to light."
Martinis and Devoret are the seventh and eighth UC Santa Barbara faculty members to be honored with Nobel Prizes.
The trio will receive the prize on December 10 at a ceremony in Stockholm. The King of Sweden will present the medals. They'll also share a cash award of 11 million Swedish kroner, or about $1.2 million.
