Old Persean awarded Nobel Prize for Physics

 

Old Persean Professor John Clarke has been jointly-awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Together with Michel H Devoret and John M Martinis, Professor Clarke (1961) received the illustrious accolade for the quantum mechanics research that paved the way for the super-computers of today.

Professor Clarke becomes the third Old Persean to be awarded a Nobel Prize after Sir George Thomson (1910) and Ronald Norrish (1916), who won the honours for Physics in 1937 and Chemistry in 1967 respectively.

The Nobel Committee recognised the pioneering work of Professors Clarke, Devoret and Martinis carried out in a series of experiments on electrical circuits during the 1980s.

Their research demonstrated the existence of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in electrical circuits.

Such discoveries laid the foundations for much of the advanced technology of today from mobile phones to fibre optic cables, as well as the building of powerful quantum computers.

Professor Clarke has worked at the University of California, Berkeley since 1969 and is currently Professor Emeritus in their Graduate School.

Head Ed Elliott commented: “The whole Perse community congratulates John on his Nobel Prize for ground-breaking research in quantum mechanics.

“John was introduced to physics at The Perse and it is truly inspiring to see where a love of scientific discovery first kindled in our school laboratories has taken him.”