{"id":290645,"date":"2025-10-10T01:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T01:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/290645\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T01:00:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T01:00:12","slug":"california-nobel-laureate-john-martinis-wont-quit-on-quantum-computers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/290645\/","title":{"rendered":"California Nobel laureate John Martinis won’t quit on quantum computers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A California physicist and Nobel laureate who laid the foundation for quantum computing isn\u2019t done working.<\/p>\n

For the last 40 years, John Martinis has worked \u2014 mostly within California \u2014 to create the fastest computers ever built.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of my professional dream to do this by the time I\u2019m really too old to retire. I should retire now, but I\u2019m not doing that,\u201d the now 67-year-old said.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think before then I\u2019d just write down the solution\u201d rather than showing his process, he joked in an interview with The Times.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

John Clarke, right, a professor emeritus of physics, looks on during a celebration at UC Berkeley on Oct. 7, 2025, after he and fellow physicists Michel Devoret and John Martinis were awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in physics for their work on quantum tunneling.<\/p>\n

(Justin Sullivan \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a fantastic experience, to be mentored by two wonderful people,\u201d he said during a news conference Tuesday at UC Santa Barbara, where he works as a professor. \u201cI learned so much from them that, through my whole career, I was kind of trying to re-create that spirit that we had in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinis was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in physics,<\/a> alongside Clarke and Devoret, for his doctoral project, a series of experiments in the mid-1980s that proved quantum tunneling was possible with large objects, which became the basis for the development of quantum computers as well as much of the current research in that field. <\/p>\n

Both Clarke and Devoret are based in the U.S. and associated with the University of California system \u2014 Clarke as a professor emeritus at Berkeley and Devoret as a professor at UC Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved Berkeley. It was great to be taught by these really amazing professors,\u201d Martinis said, noting the university\u2019s cutting-edge facilities that supported the experiments. \u201cAs a student, I could focus on just being a good scientist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinis went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship in France, then returned stateside to Boulder, Colo., where he worked at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a U.S. government lab. In 2008 he moved back to California to work at UC Santa Barbara as a professor, and in 2014, Google hired him and Devoret to create an experimental quantum processor faster than any human supercomputer \u2014 which his team completed<\/a> five years later. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt really was all this basic research we did for decades that enabled this to happen and enabled us to have a vision … to build this thing,\u201d Martinis said. <\/p>\n

He chose UC Santa Barbara as a workplace not just because of the great location and weather, but also for its advanced facilities and community. Researchers from other disciplines \u2014 such as engineers and materials scientists who build semiconductors \u2014 are able to freely communicate and collaborate with his team. <\/p>\n

\u201cWorking with talented and friendly people at the university is really special,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can actually get things done.\u201d <\/p>\n

Martinis said he has enjoyed hearing back from former students who have reached out to celebrate his award. Speaking to students years after they take his classes and grasp the effect on their lives has been refreshing. His work over the years has spawned an industry that created thousands of well-paying jobs for people across the country, he said.<\/p>\n

He praised the UC system for its culture and collaboration with the private sector and government, but said that research and development for quantum computers in the U.S. must urgently speed up if we expect to see it in our lifetimes.<\/p>\n

After leaving Google in 2020, Martinis co-founded his private company, QoLab, in 2022 with a belief that advanced semiconductor chips are the path to achieving usable quantum computers. The company has begun collaborating with other startup companies and academic groups involved in semiconductor production, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think this collaborative model is going to be more fruitful because we really get a lot of interesting ideas,\u201d Martinis said. \u201cWe have a lot to catch up on. But it\u2019s a very good atmosphere to invent things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A California physicist and Nobel laureate who laid the foundation for quantum computing isn\u2019t done working. For the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":290646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[149104,149103,2556,4060,149101,149099,149100,492,8831,4588,159,17823,1439,83445,149102,67,132,4280,68,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-290645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-basic-research","9":"tag-california-physicist","10":"tag-development","11":"tag-experiment","12":"tag-john-clarke","13":"tag-john-martinis","14":"tag-michel-devoret","15":"tag-physics","16":"tag-professor","17":"tag-quantum-computer","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-thing","20":"tag-u-s","21":"tag-uc-berkeley","22":"tag-uc-santa-barbara","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-university","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115347169245642724","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}