Since its inception in 1901, the Nobel Prize in Physics has been one of the highest honors a physicist can receive. Established in the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, the prize is designated to “The person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics…” This prize is presented annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden.
Over the decades, the Physics Nobel has recognized fundamental advances in our understanding of nature, from Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays to more recent breakthroughs in electron dynamics, quantum mechanics, and lasers. The selection process for the Nobel Physics laureate is rigorous. A distinguished group, the Nobel Committee for Physics, first reviews all nominations and proposes a list of final candidates. This committee has five main members and several adjunct members and several adjunct members who also vote. The proposal is then reviewed by the Physics Class of the Academy, which can suggest changes or alternative candidates. The final decision is made during a full meeting of the Academy. At times, members may also decide not to award a prize for that year, though this rarely happens.
This year, scientists John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis won this award for their groundbreaking research in macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit. The trio is being celebrated for proving that quantum phenomena, the interaction of matter and energy at the most fundamental level, can exist in circuits large enough to be seen with the naked eye.
Quantum tunneling is the quantum mechanical process where a particle can pass through a potential barrier even if it does not have classical energy to overcome it. Superposition refers to quantum systems existing in multiple states at the same time. Before the prizewinners’ experiments, both tunneling and superposition were known to occur at the atomic scale, but this had not been observed in macroscopic systems. The scientists’ work, first carried out in the 1980s, revealed that superconducting circuits can behave just like atoms. Superconductivity refers to materials that conduct electricity with zero electrical resistance and expel magnetic fields when cooled below specific critical temperatures (this finding was also awarded the Nobel Physics Prize in 1913). These circuits demonstrated quantum tunneling and energy quantization, meaning they could jump between energy states and even through barriers, just like electrons in the quantum world.
“The prize rewarded a fundamental discovery, but the effect’s application in quantum computing also gives it practical potential,” says Laurens Molenkamp, an experimental physicist at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “Although quantum computers are not yet a mature technology, “superconducting devices are probably the largest and closest to application”, he says. “But the final effort is yet to come.”
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics marks a striking shift from last year’s focus, signifying another expansion of the boundaries in core physics. In 2024, the prize went to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their pioneering work on artificial neural networks, the mathematical foundations behind today’s artificial intelligence. As physics pushes further into both the smallest and most complex realms of existence, the Nobel Prize remains a symbol of how human ingenuity turns the mysteries of nature into new possibilities for the future.