STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won Nobel Prize in Physics Research into a strange behavior of subatomic particles called quantum tunneling enabled ultra-sensitive measurements achieved on Tuesday. by MRI machine It laid the foundation for better cell phones and faster computers.
The work by John Clark, Michelle H. Devorette and John M. Martinis, working at American universities, took on the contradictions of the subatomic world, where light becomes waves and both particles and parts of atoms can be tunneled through seemingly impenetrable barriers. The results of their discoveries are just beginning to appear in advanced technologies and can pave the way for the development of supercharged computing.
Award-winning research in the mid-1980s took the subatomic “weirdness of quantum mechanics” and discovered how those tiny interactions could have real-world applications, said Jonathan Bagger, CEO of the American Physical Society. This experiment was an important building block in the rapidly developing world of quantum mechanics.
John Martinis stands in his living room with his wife Jean after winning the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum tunneling on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025 in Santa Barbara, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Speaking from his cell phone, Clark, who spearheaded the research team, said, “One of the fundamental reasons cell phones work is because of all this work.”
When quantum mechanics was first revealed in 1926, a prominent physicist tried to explain its many paradoxes with the example of a cat in a box that was both alive and dead at the same time. The three Nobel laureates have shown that science can make such principles work, said Richard Fitzgerald, editor-in-chief of Physics, who was in the competing research group in the 1990s.
“They didn’t take it that far, but they showed they can do it,” Fitzgerald said.
The winning physicist took “the scale of things we can’t see, we can’t touch, we can’t feel” and brought it “to the scale of things we can perceive” and made it “something you can build on,” Fitzgerald said.
Clark, 83, conducted research at the University of California, Berkeley. Martinis, 67, worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Devorette, 72, is at Yale and also at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
How the winners responded
Martinis’ wife, Jean, told Associated Press reporters who called him at home after the announcement that he was still asleep and didn’t know yet. In the past, she said, she woke up on the night of the physics prize, but at some point decided that sleep was more important.
The new Nobel laureate recalled that the award was announced this week when his wife woke up and told him about a journalist asking for an interview. He opened his computer, saw the announcement, and saw his picture with the other winners.
“So I was kind of in shock,” he said.
Clark said it never occurred to him that he would win the Nobel Prize.
“I actually broke down,” Clark told the AP. “I was completely stunned. I mean, it’s something I never dreamed of in my entire life.”
why work is important
Martinis – Who Was the Senior Google Scientist? quantum computing Before co-founding his own company, Qolab – future goals It’s quantum computing A huge leap forward in speed and sophistication By relying on the forces of contradictory states in that subatomic world.
This combination of images shows the winners of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics: John Martinis, Michel H. Devolette, and John Clark. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terlill, Harold Shapiro, University of California, Berkeley via AP)
That’s still 8-10 years away. But he said that in the team’s experiments, “computers could be much more powerful.”
Devoret is currently the lead scientist for Google’s quantum computing efforts.
Quantum computers are “one of the very obvious uses,” but the research could also help develop sensors that detect and measure faint phenomena such as magnetic fields.
A better understanding of fine chemistry can also help us develop better materials for everyday life and even further enhance artificial intelligence, Martinis said.
Before the Berkeley work, scientists knew that single electrons or small pairs of electrons could pass through puzzling barriers. What Clark said his team learned was that “if you design the circuit properly, you can actually tunnel it.”
The discovery “can be used to make very sophisticated things that wouldn’t work otherwise,” Clark said at a press conference, referring to his iPhone and quantum computers.
He also criticized the Trump administration deep cut to scientific fundingthey say, “cripples science.”
Presenting, from left, Secretary-General of the Swedish Academy of Sciences Hans Ellegren, Chairman of the Physics Committee Olle Eriksson, and member of the Nobel Johansson Committee for Physics, from left, John Clark, Michel H. Devolette, and John M. Martinis. Sweden, Tuesday, October 7, 2025 (Christine Olsson/TT news agency via AP)
“If this continues…it could take us 10 years to get back to where we were six months ago,” Clark said.
Martinis, Bagger and Fitzgerald said it’s a bit of a stretch to say the cell phone uses a breakthrough made by Clark and colleagues. But the ultra-sensitive measuring device relies on the work of a team that includes an MRI machine.
“Quantum mechanics is in everything we do, from our cell phones to the satellite communications connected to our phones to the screens we watch videos on our phones,” Bagger said.
Nobel history and other 2025 prizes
Tuesday’s award was the 119th time the award has been given. Last year, a pioneer in artificial intelligence John Hopfield and Jeffrey Hinton He won a physics award for helping create the building blocks for machine learning.
on monday, Mary E. Brancoux, Fred Ramsdell, Dr. Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday for his discoveries about how the immune system knows to attack bacteria rather than our bodies.
Nobel’s announcement continues chemistry award Wednesday and literature Thursday. nobel peace prize Announced on Friday, followed by the Nobel Memorial Prize economy on monday.
The award ceremony will be held on December 10, the anniversary of the death of the wealthy Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite in 1896. person who established the prize.
Prizes include priceless fame and a cash prize of 11 million Swedish Kroners (nearly $1.2 million).
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Coder reported from The Hague, the Netherlands, and Borenstein in Washington. Associated Press journalist Adithi Ramakrishnan in New York contributed to this report.
