2025 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 7 October 2025.

The citation

The citation reads: "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

John Clarke was born in 1942 in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and is affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley. Michel H. Devoret was born in 1953 in Paris, France, and is affiliated with Yale University, New Haven, the University of California, Santa Barbara and Google Quantum AI, Santa Barbara. John M. Martinis was born in 1958, and is affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara and Qolab, Los Angeles.

Why it matters

In experiments in the 1980s, the three physicists showed that quantum effects can be seen in an electrical circuit large enough to hold in the hand. The work underpins today's superconducting quantum computers. Clarke was born in Cambridge.

The prize

The prize is worth 11 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.