Michel Devoret, French engineer and physicist, has just been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics alongside John Clarke and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of the macroscopic quantum tunneling effect and the quantification of energy in an electrical circuit”. This award recognizes more than forty years of work at the frontier between fundamental physics and superconducting circuit engineering, a field that has paved the way for contemporary quantum computing.
Graduating from Télécom Paris in 1975, Michel Devoret first pursued a DEA in quantum optics at the University of Orsay, then a state doctoral thesis in condensed matter physics. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Berkeley between 1982 and 1984, where he met John Martinis, he founded in France, with Daniel Estève and Cristian Urbina, the Quantronique group at the CEA. This team will be one of the first in the world to demonstrate quantum coherence in superconducting circuits, marking a major milestone in the manipulation of qubits.
Since 2002, Michel Devoret has taught at Yale University, where he directs the applied physics nanofabrication laboratory. His research has profoundly renewed understanding of the quantum electrodynamics of circuits — how electromagnetic fields interact with electronic devices at the quantum scale. He notably contributed to the development of transmon qubits and Josephson devices, today at the heart of quantum processors.
Alongside his academic activities, he serves as Scientific Director at Google Quantum AI, where he oversees the fundamental directions of research into superconducting architectures. Member of the Academy of Sciences, Michel Devoret embodies one of the most influential figures in modern experimental quantum physics, at the crossroads of academic research and industrial advances in quantum computing.
We welcomed him to our podcast DECODE QUANTUM in 2021 which we invite you to rediscover on the occasion of this distinction, which follows that of Alain Aspect in 2022
In co-production with Fanny Bouton and Olivier Ezratty, FRENCHWEB.FR offers you Decode Quantum, a series to discover the quantum revolution through exchanges with key players in the quantum sector around the world.
