Googler Michel Devoret awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics
Editor’s Note: Today, Googler Michel Devoret and Google alumnus John Martinis were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, joining 2024 Nobel recipients Demis Hassabis, John Jumper and Geoff Hinton. The company now celebrates five Nobel laureates, including three prizes in the past two years.
This morning, Michel Devoret, currently at Google as Chief Scientist of Quantum Hardware on the Quantum AI team, has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics. The prize is for his work on macroscopic quantum effects that laid the foundation for modern superconducting qubit-based quantum computing. Michel shares the honor with John Martinis, former hardware leader at Google Quantum AI, and John Clarke of the University of California, Berkeley.
Our Quantum AI team is incredibly proud to see Michel and John recognized for their pioneering work, and it’s another exciting moment at Google. They join a distinguished group of now 5 Nobel-winning Googlers and alumni, including 2024 winners Demis Hassabis, John Jumper and Geoffrey Hinton.
Quantum mechanics on a macroscopic scale
This award celebrates a series of meticulous experiments conducted in the 1980s that had a revolutionary impact on physics and technology. Michel, John Martinis and John Clarke proved a remarkable concept: that the strange, counterintuitive laws of quantum mechanics — phenomena previously thought to be confined to atoms and subatomic particles — could be revealed and controlled in a macroscopic electrical circuit on a chip. They created a superconducting electrical circuit (i.e., a circuit with no electrical resistance) with a special feature known as a Josephson Junction, that can be used to create and manipulate these quantum phenomena.
The foundation for superconducting quantum computing
For Google’s Quantum AI team, this Nobel Prize is not just a celebration of historic science, it’s a celebration of the foundation of our current work on superconducting quantum computing. Josephson Junctions form the basis for today’s superconducting quantum bits (qubits), including those we’re making at Google Quantum AI. Michel and John's work enabled our progress so far, including the breakthrough Willow quantum chip we announced last year, and our 2019 milestone demonstrating that a quantum computer could complete a benchmark calculation impossible on a classical computer. It’s also guiding our path forward, as we progress on our hardware roadmap and advance our mission to build quantum computing for otherwise unsolvable problems.
This prize is a profound testament to the recipients’ work, and to the power of fundamental research. Decades later, their discoveries are continuing to inspire us to build the next era of computing.
