Still on a quantum computing quest

A California physicist and Nobel laureate who laid the foundation for quantum computing isn't done working.

- SANDRA MCDONALD

CALIFORNIA native John Martinis and wife Jean celebrate his Nobel in physics.

(MARK J. TERRILL Associated Press)

For the last 40 years, John Martinis has worked — mostly within California — to create the fastest computers ever built.

“It’s kind of my professional dream to do this by the time I'm really too old to retire. I should retire now, but I’m not doing that,” the now 67-year-old said.

Born and raised in San Pedro, Martinis said his California high school teachers influenced him to pursue his career. A physics teacher got him interested in the topic, he said, and a math teacher taught him rigor, work ethic and organization.

“I think before then I'd just write down the solution” rather than showing his process, he joked in an interview with The Times.

As an undergraduate senior at UC Berkeley in the 1980s, he met John Clarke, a British physicist and professor who would become his graduate advisor, and Michel Devoret, a French physicist who worked with him as a postdoctoral researcher.