The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics: Quantum Behavior at the Macroscopic Scale
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to John Clarke (UC Berkeley), Michel H. Devoret (Yale/UC Santa Barbara), and John M. Martinis (UC Santa Barbara) “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit."
➡️ Read the full announcement on NobelPrize.org
Their pioneering experiments demonstrated that superconducting circuits—operating at temperatures near absolute zero—can exhibit quantum phenomena such as energy quantization and tunneling, behaviors once thought to exist only at the atomic level. By revealing that these effects persist in carefully engineered, macroscopic systems, the laureates opened a pathway toward quantum technologies that now underpin efforts in quantum computing and precision measurement.
Photo credit: © The Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2025. Source: nobelprize.org.
This year’s Nobel Prize recognizes work that reshaped how we understand the boundary between classical and quantum physics. The insights of Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis transformed superconducting circuits into “artificial atoms,” providing the physical framework for today’s superconducting qubits and marking a major milestone in the ongoing “second quantum revolution.”
The American Crystallographic Association congratulates the 2025 Nobel Laureates in Physics for their groundbreaking contributions to experimental physics and for deepening our collective understanding of the quantum foundations that continue to inspire discoveries across the physical sciences.
From www.nobelprize.org:
