Overview

• The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences named John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis as laureates on Tuesday in Stockholm.
• The three scientists will share an award of 11 million Swedish kronor.
• Clarke said the honor was “the surprise of my life,” reflecting his astonishment at the news.
• The Nobel committee credited discoveries including macroscopic quantum tunnelling and discrete energy levels in cooled electrical circuits that made quantum behavior observable at circuit scale.
• Experts said the work underpins superconducting qubits used by firms such as Google, IBM, Alice and Bob, IQM and Oxford Quantum Circuits, while the dominant quantum computing platform remains undecided.