John M. Martinis

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John M. Martinis
John Martinis (cropped).jpg
Martinis in 2007
Born
John Matthew Martinis

1958 (age 66–67)
United States
Education University of California, Berkeley (BS, PhD)
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
Thesis Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling and Energy-Level Quantization in the Zero Voltage State of the Current-Biased Josephson Junction  (1985)
Doctoral advisor John Clarke

John Matthew Martinis [1] (born 1958) is an American physicist and Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. [2] [3] He led a team to develop a superconducting quantum computer at Google Quantum AI Lab, a partnership between UC Santa Barbara and Google. With the Sycamore processor, they claimed the first evidence of quantum supremacy in 2019.

Contents

He shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Clarke and Michel Devoret for their joint work on macroscopic quantum phenomena in superconductors. [4]

Early life and education

John Matthew Martinis was born in 1958 and raised in San Pedro, California. [5] He describes himself as of Croatian descent, his mother being from United States and his father being an ethnic Croat from Komiža on the island of Vis near Split, Croatia. [6] His father immigrated to the United States from Yugoslavia, escaping the communist regime. [5]

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Martinis received a Bachelor of Science in physics in 1980 and a Doctor of Philosophy in physics in 1987. [7]

During his doctoral studies, he investigated the quantum behaviour of a macroscopic variable, the phase difference across a Josephson tunnel junction. [8] [9] His doctorate advisor was John Clarke. [9] During this time, he collaborated with Michel Devoret, a postdoctoral researcher at the time. [9]

Martinis giving a lecture in 2017

In 1985, Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis presented their analysis of microwave pulses that demonstrated the quantized energy levels of a Josephson junction. [9] This work would later become the basis for superconducting quantum computing. [9]

Career

He joined the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique in Saclay, France, [10] for a first postdoc and then the Electromagnetic Technology division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, where he worked on superconducting quantum interference device (SQUIDs) amplifiers. [11] [10]

Since 2004, Martinis has served on the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara. [2] He held the title of Susan and Bruce Worster Chair in Experimental Physics for many years. The quantum device he developed in collaboration with UCSB colleagues was named Science magazine's 2010 Breakthrough of the Year. [2] Google Quantum AI Lab, a partnership between UC Santa Barbara and Google, announced in 2014 that it had hired Martinis and his team in a multimillion dollar deal to build a quantum computer using superconducting qubits. [12] [13] He and his team published a paper in Nature in 2019, [14] where they presented how they achieved quantum supremacy for the first time using the Sycamore processor, a 53-qubit quantum processor. [15] Martinis resigned from Google in April 2020 after being reassigned to an advisory role. [16] [12]

In 2020, Martinis joined Silicon Quantum Computing, a start-up founded in Australia by Professor Michelle Simmons. [17] In 2022, he founded Qolab, a quantum computing private company based on semiconductor chip manufacturing. [18]

Honors and awards

In 2014, he shared the Fritz London Memorial Prize with Michel Devoret and Robert J. Schoelkopf. [19]

In 2021, he received the John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and Their Applications. [20]

In 2025, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics alongside his doctoral advisor John Clarke and Michel Devoret for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit. [4]

References

  1. ↑ Martinis, J. M. (December 1985). "Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling and Energy-Level Quantization in the Zero Voltage State of the Current-Biased Josephson Junction".
  2. 1 2 3 "John M. Martinis". UC Santa Barbara. Archived from the original on October 10, 2025. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  3. ↑ "Who is John M. Martinis? Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 Winner's Education & Other Awards". The Daily Guardian. October 7, 2025. Retrieved October 7, 2025.
  4. 1 2 "Nobel Prize in Physics 2025". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved October 7, 2025.
  5. 1 2 "2025 Nobel Prize Resources – Meet the Laureates". AIP.ORG. October 7, 2025. Retrieved October 7, 2025.
  6. ↑ Dimitropoulos, George (October 10, 2025). "New generation will make the quantum revolution a reality,' says Nobel laureate John Martinis". Euronews. Retrieved October 13, 2025.
  7. ↑ "Meet the 2025 Nobel prize winners in Physics: Where they studied and how their research shaped quantum science". The Times of India. October 7, 2025. ISSN   0971-8257 . Retrieved October 7, 2025.
  8. ↑ Clarke, J.; Cleland, A. N.; Devoret, M. H.; Esteve, D.; Martinis, J. M. (February 26, 1988). "Quantum mechanics of a macroscopic variable: the phase difference of a josephson junction". Science. 239 (4843): 992–997. Bibcode:1988Sci...239..992C. doi:10.1126/science.239.4843.992. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   17815701. S2CID   1732678.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Hassinger, Sebastian (September 11, 2024). The New Quantum Era. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN   978-1-0981-4938-3.
  10. 1 2 Rogers, Kara (October 7, 2025). "John M. Martinis". www.britannica.com. Retrieved October 8, 2025.
  11. ↑ Welty, Richard P.; Martinis, John M. (March 1993). "Two-stage integrated SQUID amplifier with series array output". IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity. 3 (1): 2605–2608. Bibcode:1993ITAS....3.2605W. doi:10.1109/77.233523. ISSN   1051-8223. S2CID   33500389.
  12. 1 2 "Google's Top Quantum Scientist Explains In Detail Why He Resigned". forbes.com. April 30, 2020. Retrieved January 18, 2025.
  13. ↑ Finley, Klint (September 5, 2014). "The Man Who Will Build Google's Elusive Quantum Computer". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved November 2, 2019.
  14. ↑ Arute, Frank; Arya, Kunal; Babbush, Ryan; Bacon, Dave; Bardin, Joseph C.; Barends, Rami; Biswas, Rupak; Boixo, Sergio; Brandao, Fernando G. S. L.; Buell, David A.; Burkett, Brian (October 2019). "Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor". Nature. 574 (7779): 505–510. arXiv: 1910.11333 . Bibcode:2019Natur.574..505A. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1666-5 . ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   31645734.
  15. ↑ "Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » Quantum supremacy: the gloves are off". October 23, 2019. Retrieved November 4, 2019.
  16. ↑ "Google's Head of Quantum Computing Hardware Resigns". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  17. ↑ "Ex-Google quantum chief joins Simmons' silicon startup". InnovationAus. September 29, 2020. Retrieved September 29, 2020.
  18. ↑ "California physicist and Nobel laureate John Martinis won't quit on quantum computers". Los Angeles Times. October 9, 2025. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
  19. ↑ "Fritz London Memorial Prize". phy.duke.edu. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  20. ↑ "John Stewart Bell Prize" . Retrieved May 3, 2021.
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