Three U.S.-based scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for their discoveries in quantum mechanics.
The award was given to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for “experiments that revealed quantum physics in action,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
“To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life,” 83-year-old Clarke told reporters at the announcement by phone after being told of his win.
He paid tribute to the other two laureates, saying that “their contributions are just overwhelming.”
“Our discovery in some ways is the basis of quantum computing. Exactly at this moment where this fits in is not entirely clear to me,” said Clarke, who is British but conducted his research at the University of California, Berkeley.
Speaking from his cellphone, Clarke added: “One of the underlying reasons that cellphones work is because of all this work.’’
Martinis, an American, previously headed Google’s quantum computing team. He conducted his research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as did Davoret who is also based at Yale. Davoret, who is French, is the chief scientist of Google Quantum AI.
The Nobel winners carried out experiments in the 1980s with an electronic circuit built of superconductors and demonstrated that quantum mechanics could also influence everyday objects under certain conditions.
The laureates’ work continues to provide opportunities to develop “the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors,” the Nobel committee said.
“It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises. It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation of all digital technology,” said Olle Eriksson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
Artificial intelligence pioneers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton won the physics prize last year for helping create the building blocks of machine learning.
Physics is the second Nobel to be awarded this week, after Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries about how the immune system knows to attack germs and not our bodies.
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is set to be revealed on Friday.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed.
