The Nobel Prize in Physics goes to the early research that led to today’s quantum computers

On Thursday, three physicists received 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics For their work in quantum mechanics in the 1980s. Researchers John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinez created a circuit with no electrical resistance to demonstrate a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling, or how atoms and subatomic particles can move through a barrier material that they shouldn’t be able to cross.

It was all theoretical before Clark, Devoret and Martinez created the ring. But their experiments showed that tunneling was possible in a physical circuit, later leading to modern transistors and the emerging quantum computing industry.

“I’m on my cell phone and I suspect you are too, and one of the reasons the cell phone works is because of all this work,” Clark said in a phone call with reporters at the Nobel Prize ceremony. He said he was “absolutely amazed” to receive the award. Reuters I mentioned.

Clark led the team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, where he began his professorship in 1969 and He remains professor emeritus. Over the decades, the trio’s early work has expanded to form the basis for modern quantum computers.

Martinez and Devoret both researched quantum computing at Google. In 2019, Martinez, then the hardware lead for the Google Quantum AI team, and other researchers announced the creation of a computer with “Quantitative superiority“Much faster at solving a problem than the fastest supercomputer.” He left his position at Google but is still a professor there Yale University and University of California, Santa Baraba. Devour it Chief quantum hardware scientist at Google Quantum AI and a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The trio joins a rare group of physicists around the world to win science’s highest award, including Max Planck In 1918 and Albert Einstein In 1921.