Scientists find Nobel glory at the end of the quantum tunnel

The Nobel prize in physics 2025 has been awarded to British, French and American scientists for experiments that paved the way for the next generation of quantum technologies.

- Hannah Devlin

John Clarke, a British physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, Michel Devoret, a French physicist at Yale University, and John Martinis, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, share the £871,000 prize.

The trio led experiments showing the bizarre properties of the quantum world could translate into measurable effects in macroscopic electrical circuits. This included a demonstration that quantum tunnelling - the equivalent of a ball passing straight through a brick wall - can occur in superconducting electrical circuits.

The scientists were honoured for the “discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit”. The work opened up the development of quantum cryptography and quantum computers.