San Pedro Native, John M. Martinis Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 By Writer and Contributor NJ Jaeger
In the wee hours of the morning John Martinis’ wife took a call that would lead to the most extraordinary day of their lives. On the phone was the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to announce her husband’s Nobel Prize Award in Physics 2025, along with his team members, John Clarke and Michel H. Devoret.
By 6AM reporters were lined up on his doorstep, “My wife is very kind to me, I needed the sleep,” remarked Martinis, who was thankful his wife had permitted him to sleep in until 5:30AM.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.”
The laureates used a series of experiments to demonstrate that the bizarre properties of the quantum world can be made concrete in a system big enough to be held in the hand. Their superconducting electrical system could tunnel from one state to another, as if it were passing straight through a wall. They also showed that the system absorbed and emitted energy in doses of specific sizes, just as predicted by quantum mechanics.
The team relied heavily on each other for ideation and changes in approach of the most basic ideas and tools. Martinis says, “The impacts of working with these talented scientists was a great experience early in my career.”
Figure 2. When you throw a ball at a wall, you can be sure it will bounce back at you. You would be extremely surprised if the ball suddenly appeared on the other side of a solid wall. This is exactly the type of phenomenon that has given quantum physics a reputation for being bizarre and unintuitive. ©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
“This particle-like system is trapped in a state in which current flows without any voltage – a state from which it does not have enough energy to escape. In the experiment, the system shows its quantum character by using tunnelling to escape the zero-voltage state, generating an electrical voltage. The laureates were also able to show that the system is quantized, which means it only absorbs or emits energy in specific amounts.”
The team’s contribution provides a new understanding of the entire macroscopic system, which measures quantum mechanical properties, and will aid scientists in the possibilities of microscopic particles theoretical and practical benefits.
Figure 5. In a normal conductor, the electrons jostle with each other and with the material. When a material becomes a superconductor, the electrons join up as pairs, Cooper pairs, and form a current where there is no resistance. The gap in the illustration marks the Josephson junction. Cooper pairs can behave as if they were all a single particle that fills the entire electrical circuit. Quantum mechanics describes this collective state using a shared wave function. The properties of this wave function play the leading role in the laureates’ experiment. ©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Unique properties of quantum mechanics can be eliminated at macroscopic scale, but John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis discovered many particles, such as those in manifold Cooper pairs will behave as predicted.
Martinis’ new company, Qolab, is collaborating with innovators and category leading companies to build the world's first functioning quantum computer. Martinis recognizes that the hardest challenge he faces in building a powerful quantum computer is, “ the system engineering. “
JOHN M. MARTINIS
Born 1958. Raised in San Pedro CA. PhD 1987 from University of California, Berkeley, USA. Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, USA and Chief Technology Officer at Qolab, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
MLA style: Popular information. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach 2025. Tue. 4 Nov 2025. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2025/popular-information/>
NJ is a storyteller who has written in many voices for clients in health, education, entertainment, food, sport and politics. Her firm managed publicity for documentary films, book authors and the U.S. Championships. NJ received the Lynn Weaver Award from the Entertainment Professional Publicists Society for her lifelong commitment to philanthropy and community volunteerism.