Michel Devoret, French engineer and physicist, has just been distinguished by the Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 alongside John Clarke and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of the quantum macroscopic tunnel effect and the quantification of energy in an electrical circuit”. This prize spends more than forty years of work on the border between fundamental physics and the engineering of superconductive circuits, an area which has opened the way to contemporary quantum computers.
A graduate of Télécom Paris in 1975, Michel Devoret first continued a quantum optical DEA at the University of Orsay, then a State doctoral thesis in condensed material physics. After a post-doctorate 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 CEA group. This team will be one of the first in the world to demonstrate quantum coherence in superconductive circuits, marking a major step in manipulation of qubits.
Since 2002, Michel Devoret has been teaching at Yale University, where he managed the Nanofabrication laboratory in applied physics. His research has deeply renewed the understanding of quantum electrodynamics of circuits – the way in which electromagnetic fields interact with electronic devices on a quantum scale. He notably contributed to the development of transmons qubits and Josephson devices, today at the heart of quantum processors.
In addition to his university activities, he held the position of scientific director at Google Quantum AI, where he oversees the fundamental orientations of research on superconductive architectures. Member of the Academy of Sciences, Michel Devoret embodies one of the most influential figures of modern experimental quantum physics, at the crossroads of academic research and industrial advances in quantum calculation.
We welcomed it in our Podcast Decode Quantum in 2021 that 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 the key players in the quantum sector in the world.
