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Portrait of Michel H. Devoret
Photo: Christian Ursilva from København, Danmark, Michel Devoret · CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Nobel Prize in Physics · 2025

Michel H. Devoret

Showed that an electric circuit you can hold obeys quantum rules, then spent 40 years turning such circuits into qubits.

The Nobel citation: “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit”
Born
1953, Paris, France
Shared with
John Clarke, John M. Martinis
Affiliation at the time
Yale University, USA; University of California, USA; Google Quantum AI, USA

Physics prize

2025

Shared with 2 other laureates.

Age that year

72years

Born in 1953.

Sources cited

22

Fact-checked September 24, 2026.

  • The chip in the 1985 experiment was about a centimetre across, yet billions of paired electrons in it acted together like one single quantum particle.
  • He gave the 2025 Nobel banquet speech for all three laureates and joked that his English-speaking co-laureates had picked the one with a thick French accent.
  • He co-authored the 2007 paper introducing the transmon, a superconducting qubit design now used in quantum computing efforts around the world.
  • At Yale he co-taught a course called Cinema and Physics with a film professor, after the pair won a campus contest to link the sciences and humanities.
  • He slept through the Nobel announcement and first thought the flood of messages was a joke, until he called his daughter in Paris to check.

The breakthrough

Quantum tunnelling and energy levels in a circuit you can hold

Quantum mechanics says tiny particles can do strange things. An electron can pass straight through a barrier it should not be able to cross, which is called tunnelling. It can also hold only certain fixed amounts of energy, like a ladder with rungs and no ramp. Big objects never seem to do this: a ball thrown at a wall always bounces back. In 1984 and 1985, as a young postdoctoral researcher in John Clarke's lab at Berkeley, Devoret worked with graduate student John Martinis to test whether a whole electrical circuit could behave like one quantum particle. The circuit was made of superconductors, metals that carry current with no resistance when very cold, separated by a thin insulating layer called a Josephson junction. In a superconductor, electrons pair up and billions of pairs move in step, so the whole current acts like a single object. The team shielded the chip from stray electrical noise and measured every property of the circuit separately, so theory and experiment could be compared with no guesswork. They saw the circuit escape from a state with no voltage by tunnelling. When they shone microwaves on it, it absorbed energy only in fixed steps. Picture a marble in a bowl that sometimes turns up outside the rim without ever rolling over it. The result showed that a circuit big enough to handle follows quantum rules and could serve as an artificial atom.[1],[2],[3],[4]

“a fundamental discovery really becomes true when actually you can apply it to something concrete.”
Michel H. Devoret, Telephone interview with nobelprize.org after the 2025 prize announcement, explaining his move from fundamental research to building quantum computers at Google.[5]

What it meant for humanity

Devoret's experiments turned a physics puzzle into an engineering material. Once a circuit was shown to have quantum energy levels, it could be designed like an artificial atom with wires attached, and after the discovery of quantum algorithms in the 1990s such circuits became a leading candidate for quantum bits, or qubits. Devoret spent the next four decades building them. Back in France he co-founded the Quantronics group at CEA Saclay, which in 2002 reported the quantronium, one of the first superconducting circuits that could serve as a building block for a quantum processor. At Yale, with Robert Schoelkopf and Steven Girvin, he helped develop circuit quantum electrodynamics and co-authored the 2007 transmon design, which the Nobel committee says is now used in efforts worldwide to build a large quantum computer. With his Yale colleagues he built amplifiers that read signals of about one photon, caught quantum jumps in the act, and passed the break-even point for protecting quantum information. As chief scientist for quantum hardware at Google Quantum AI, he works on machines that Google says rest on his early work, including the Willow chip, whose error rate halved each time its grid of qubits grew. None of this has yet delivered a practical benefit that can be counted: quantum computers are still being developed. The deepest effect so far is on understanding, since the experiments showed that quantum mechanics holds for an object made of billions of particles. Devoret has also trained many researchers; he says most of his graduate students came from countries other than France or the United States.

  • The 1985 Berkeley experiments showed quantum tunnelling and fixed energy levels in a superconducting circuit, answering a question posed by theorist Anthony Leggett.[3],[4],[7]
  • In 2002 his CEA Saclay group reported the quantronium, one of the first superconducting circuits that could work as a quantum bit in an electronic chip.[10],[12]
  • He co-authored the 2007 transmon qubit design, which is insensitive to charge noise and is used in a number of efforts to build a large-scale quantum computer.[4],[9]
  • In 2010 his Yale team reported an amplifier that comes very close to the quantum limit on added noise, built to read out signals as weak as a single photon.[13]
  • In 2019 he and his Yale colleagues showed that a quantum jump in an artificial atom gives a brief warning, so it can be caught and even reversed mid-flight, which might help correct errors in quantum computers.[14],[21]
  • Google Quantum AI, where he is chief scientist for quantum hardware, says his and Martinis's work enabled its progress, including the Willow chip, which in 2024 showed errors falling as more qubits were added.[2],[15],[16]

Impact in numbers

We record no numeric impact claims for Devoret. His 1985 experiments with Clarke and Martinis settled a basic question: quantum mechanics applies to a circuit made of billions of particles, not just to atoms. That finding turned superconducting circuits into artificial atoms, and his own later work on the quantronium, the transmon, quantum-limited amplifiers and error correction helped make them one of the leading platforms for quantum computing, now pursued by Google and others. But no quantum computer has yet produced a benefit that can be counted in lives, people or dollars. Crediting him with a share of the quantum industry's investment or its hoped-for future would mean inventing a number, and many groups worldwide built the field he helped start. The possible harm, a machine that breaks today's encryption, is also still in the future, and governments are already preparing replacement standards. For now his impact is best measured in understanding and in the tools and researchers he gave a young field.

Fundamental scienceTechnology

No number is given here on purpose. Some contributions cannot be counted honestly, and we would rather describe them than invent a figure.

The double edge

The main risk tied to this line of work lies in the future. A large quantum computer could break the public-key encryption that protects email, online shopping and government secrets, and in 2024 the US standards agency NIST released new encryption standards built to resist such machines, noting that some experts expect a code-breaking quantum computer within a decade. Superconducting circuits are one of several technologies racing toward that goal. Part of his Yale research on quantum amplifiers was funded by the National Security Agency and the Army Research Office, alongside the National Science Foundation. Devoret has said scientists should ask from time to time whether their discoveries are good or bad for society, and that he does not think his own work looks especially dangerous. No harm has yet been documented.

  • Moderate

    A future threat to today's encryption

    Quantum computers of the kind superconducting circuits aim to build could break the encryption behind much of online life. NIST finalized its first post-quantum encryption standards in 2024 and urged system administrators to start switching as soon as possible. The threat is still prospective: no quantum computer has yet broken real-world encryption.[3],[17]

  • Minor

    Defense and intelligence funding

    Yale's 2010 report on his near-quantum-limited amplifier lists the National Security Agency and the Army Research Office among its funders, alongside the National Science Foundation, showing security agencies' interest in quantum computing.[13]

Against the odds

Devoret was born in Paris in 1953, eight years after the liberation of France. When France fell in 1940 about 350,000 Jews lived there. The Vichy regime's Jewish Statutes of 1940 and 1941 pushed them out of public life, the civil service and professions such as medicine, law and teaching. Some 77,000 Jews living in France died in camps, most of them at Auschwitz, or in detention on French soil. Devoret has said the war was especially hard for his parents' families because of their Jewish background, that relatives on both sides died, and that the survivors carried lasting trauma. His mother's cousin Pierre Goltman came back from Auschwitz. His own childhood was settled: he grew up in Montreuil, east of Paris, and from 1961 in Orsay, where his father worked at a new university and research centre. The hurdles he describes in his own career are scientific ones. He chose physics in the 1970s, when funding had dipped and senior physicists advised students to go into biology instead. We found no record of antisemitism aimed at him personally.

  • —

    Family killed

    Before he was born, relatives on both his mother's and his father's side died during the Second World War, and a cousin of his mother survived Auschwitz. He has spoken of the lasting trauma this left on the family's survivors.[20]

  • 1940

    Persecution

    In the generation before his birth, Vichy's Jewish Statutes of 1940 and 1941 drove Jews in France from public life and the professions, and some 77,000 Jews living in France died in the Holocaust.[18]

Jewish background

Both parents JewishRelationship to Jewish identity not documented

In a 2021 oral-history interview for the American Institute of Physics, Devoret said that both his mother's and his father's families were of Jewish background but not at all religious, and that relatives on both sides died during the Second World War. A cousin of his mother, Pierre Goltman, survived Auschwitz. We read these passages as quoted at length by WinGate News, because the AIP transcript itself could not be opened. His own view of Jewish identity is not described. In his Nobel interviews he calls his father a biologist and his mother a schoolteacher.[6],[11],[20]

Key dates

  1. 1953

    Born Michel Henri Devoret in Paris, France. His father is a biologist and his mother a schoolteacher.[1],[2],[6]

  2. 1961

    The family moves from Montreuil to Orsay, where his father works at a new university and research centre.[6]

  3. 1975

    Graduates as a telecommunications engineer from the École nationale supérieure des télécommunications in Paris.[9],[11],[22]

  4. 1982

    Earns his doctorate at the University of Orsay after research in Anatole Abragam's laboratory at Saclay, then starts a postdoc with John Clarke at Berkeley.[2],[6],[8]

  5. 1984

    His Berkeley postdoc over, he returns to France and co-founds the Quantronics group at CEA Saclay with Daniel Esteve and Cristian Urbina.[8],[22]

  6. 1985

    With Clarke and John Martinis, publishes the experiments showing macroscopic quantum tunnelling and quantised energy levels in a Josephson junction.[1],[4]

  7. 1991

    Wins the Ampère Prize of the French Academy of Sciences, shared with Daniel Esteve.[8]

  8. May 3, 2002

    His Saclay group reports the quantronium, an early superconducting quantum bit, in Science. The same year he joins the Yale faculty.[9],[12]

  9. 2007

    Co-authors the paper introducing the transmon qubit and takes up the chair of mesoscopic physics at the Collège de France.[4],[8]

  10. May 6, 2010

    His Yale team reports in Nature an amplifier that comes close to the quantum limit on noise.[13]

  11. June 3, 2019

    His Yale group reports in Nature that a quantum jump in an artificial atom gives a brief warning and can be caught and reversed mid-flight.[14],[21]

  12. 2024

    Retires from Yale's full-time faculty and becomes professor emeritus. He also works at UC Santa Barbara and as chief scientist for quantum hardware at Google Quantum AI.[2],[9],[22]

  13. October 7, 2025

    Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with John Clarke and John M. Martinis.[1],[2]

  14. December 8, 2025

    Gives his Nobel lecture in Stockholm, titled From macroscopic quantum phenomena to artificial atoms.[19]

Sources

  1. 1.Michel H. Devoret – Facts – 2025 · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 2025
  2. 2.Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 · The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org, 2025
  3. 3.Popular information: Quantum properties on a human scale · The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org, 2025
  4. 4.Scientific Background to the Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 · The Nobel Committee for Physics, 2025
  5. 5.Michel H. Devoret – Interview (including October 2025 telephone interview) · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 2025
  6. 6.Transcript from an interview with Michel Devoret, 6 December 2025 · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 2025
  7. 7.Michel H. Devoret – Banquet speech · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 2025
  8. 8.Michel Devoret – Biography and publications (Chair of Mesoscopic Physics) · Collège de France
  9. 9.Yale's Michel H. Devoret wins 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics · Yale News, 2025
  10. 10.Nobel winner says prize honors an entire field of colleagues and students · Yale News, 2025
  11. 11.Michel Devoret · Wikipedia, 2026
  12. 12.Les chercheurs du CEA ont réalisé le premier circuit électronique qui pourrait servir de brique de base à un futur processeur quantique · CEA, Service de physique de l'état condensé (SPEC), 2002
  13. 13.Yale-designed amplifier pushes the boundary of quantum physics · Yale News, 2010
  14. 14.To catch a quantum jump · Physics World (IOP Publishing), 2019
  15. 15.Googler Michel Devoret awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics · Google (The Keyword blog), 2025
  16. 16.Meet Willow, our state-of-the-art quantum chip · Google (The Keyword blog), 2024
  17. 17.NIST Releases First 3 Finalized Post-Quantum Encryption Standards · National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2024
  18. 18.France (Holocaust Encyclopedia) · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  19. 19.Michel H. Devoret – Nobel Prize lecture: From macroscopic quantum phenomena to artificial atoms · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach), 2025
  20. 20.Yale Son of Holocaust Survivors Wins Nobel (archived copy, quoting Devoret's 2021 AIP oral-history interview) · WinGate News, via Internet Archive, 2025
  21. 21.To catch and reverse a quantum jump mid-flight · Nature 570, 200-204 (Minev et al., including M. H. Devoret), 2019
  22. 22.Michel H. Devoret (archived copy) · Encyclopaedia Britannica, via Internet Archive, 2025

Fact-checked on September 24, 2026 by a separate AI fact-checking pass that re-opened the sources, with 8 corrections made. How we check

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