Life
John Clarke was born on 10 February 1942 in Cambridge. [4] [5] He attended the Perse School, before embarking on a Natural Sciences degree at Christ's College, Cambridge. [6] He graduated with a BA degree in Physics in 1964, and then studied for a PhD in physics at the Royal Society Mond Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. [7]
In 1965, Clarke became one of the first students to join the newly-formed Darwin College, Cambridge, and was the first president of the Darwin College students' association. [8] During his doctoral work, which was supervised by Brian Pippard, Clarke developed a very sensitive voltmeter, which he later called SLUG, for "Superconducting Low-inductance Undulatory Galvanometer". [6] [7] He obtained his PhD in 1968. [7] Clarke has said at various times that his work was influenced by Nobel laureate Brian Josephson, who predicted the Josephson effect in 1962 and was also a previous student of Pippard. [9] [10]
After completing his doctorate, Clarke gained a post-doctoral research position at the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently worked at Berkeley for his whole academic career, as assistant professor (1969), associate professor (1971) and as professor of physics (1973 to 2010). [11]
Clarke's association with the University of Cambridge continued, after he moved to the United States. [11] In 1972, Clarke was elected a fellow of Christ's College; in 1989, he was a visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and in 1998 he was elected a by-fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. [11] Clarke was awarded an ScD degree from the University of Cambridge in 2003. [11] He was elected an honorary fellow of Christ's College in 1997, and of Darwin College in 2023. [11]
Research
His research focuses on superconductivity and superconducting electronics, particularly in the development and application of superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), which are ultrasensitive detectors of magnetic flux. [12] [13] [14]
In 1985, Clarke with John M. Martinis, his PhD student, and Michel Devoret, a postdoctoral researcher at the time, demonstrated the quantum behaviour of a Josephson junction. [3] [15] They showed that at low temperature, a macroscopic electronic state associated with superconductors underwent quantum tunnelling at zero voltage. [16] The same year, by sending microwave pulses of the system, the resonances showed quantized energy levels. [17] This experiment was the first evidence of circuit quantum electrodynamics, that would become later the basis for superconducting quantum computing. [18] [19]
He has also worked in the application of SQUIDs configured as quantum-noise limited amplifiers to search for the axion, a possible component of dark matter. [12]
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