John Clarke
John Clarke shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics with Michel Devoret and John Martinis for discovering macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit — work that laid the groundwork for modern quantum computers.
Career
Born in Cambridge, England in 1942, Clarke earned his PhD from Cambridge University before joining UC Berkeley’s physics faculty in 1969, where he has remained for decades as an emeritus professor, a Distinguished Teaching Award recipient, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In the early 1980s, Clarke, Devoret and Martinis built an experiment using a Josephson junction to show that a macroscopic electrical circuit could behave like a single atom, with quantized energy levels — and that quantum tunnelling could occur at that larger scale. The circuit effectively functioned as an early qubit. Beyond this work, Clarke developed SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices) used in applications from medical imaging to dark-matter detection. At 83, he became UC Berkeley’s 27th Nobel laureate.
Why invite
A foundational figure in quantum computing whose 2025 Nobel recognizes work now underpinning a major tech industry race — strong science-desk interview target.