Overview

• Sweden’s yal SwSwedish Academy of Sciences cited “the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”
• Using a superconducting Josephson-junction circuit in 1984–85, the laureates showed that currents behave as a single quantum entity, demonstrating tunnelling and discrete energy levels at a macroscopic scale.
• John Clarke is at the University of California, Berkeley; Michel H. Devoret is at Yale University and the University of California, Santa Barbara; John M. Martinis is at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
• Each Nobel Prize this year carries 11 million Swedish kronor, with medals and diplomas to be presented at the December 10 ceremony in Stockholm.
• Nobel week continues with chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday, the Peace Prize on Friday and economic sciences on October 13, with announcements streamed on the Nobel Prize’s official channels.