The coveted Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three United States' scientists: John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for their groundbreaking research in quantum tunneling.
The Nobel committee said, "Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis have been awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit."
Their key breakthrough was scaling quantum tunneling from a microscopic phenomenon to a macroscopic level, visible to the naked eye.
On Tuesday, October 10, 2025, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences revealed the winners during a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.
Marking the 119th Nobel Prize in Physics, the award includes a cash prize of 11 million Swedish Kronor ($1.2 million.)
Clarke responded, after receiving the call confirming the honor. He said, “To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life.”
He called collaborators Devoret and Martins “brilliant people” whose contributions were just overwhelming.
Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis conducted experiments that successfully showcased quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels in an electrical circuit “big enough to be held in the hand,” according to the statement released by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Quantum tunneling enables particles to pass through seemingly impossible barriers.
This is because in quantum physics particles exist as both waves and particles simultaneously; those waves are the projected probabilities of the particle existing in a given space.
Researchers Clarke, Devoret, and Martins successfully demonstrated that quantum mechanical properties can be observed at a macroscopic scale through their experiments.
The prize for physics will be awarded on Wednesday, literature on Thursday, and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday this week.
The economics prize will be announced on October 13, 2025.
The Nobel Prizes are presented to the laureates on December 10, 2025, which marks the anniversary of Swedish businessman Alfred Nobel’s death.
Since the establishment of the Nobel Prize, the physics prize has been awarded to 229 laureates.
The previous year’s Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to the British-Canadian scientist Geoffrey Hinton from the University of Toronto and American scientist John Hopfield of Princeton University for their discoveries and inventions that facilitate machine learning in artificial neural networks.