John Clarke, Michel H Devoret and John M Martinis are awarded "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit".
John Clarke was born in the United Kingdom in 1942. Michel H Devoret was born in 1953 in France. The American John M Martinis was born in 1958.
"Talking now"
When the trio conducted their experiments at Berkeley University in the 1980s, Clarke had no idea that it would lead to a Nobel Prize one day.
It did not occur to us in any way that it would have such a significant impact, says John Clarke at the press conference where the prize is announced.
That their discovery would eventually become everyday technology, such as smartphones, he could not imagine.
People have pointed out that there are many concrete areas of application, such as mobile phones. I'm talking on my mobile phone now and I suspect you are too. One of the underlying reasons why it works is all this work, continues Clarke.
Passing through the wall
Clarke may have been the leader of the trio, but they would never have been able to make the breakthrough without the other two, he says.
This discovery could not have happened without their (Devoret and Martinis) efforts.
Eva Olsson, professor of nano- and biophysics at Chalmers, explains the prize winners' discoveries as follows:
It's about making a world available that lies beyond our ordinary world. An example is this business with a barrier. We can throw a ball against a wall and get it back. But in this quantum mechanical world, what we throw against the wall can go through the wall, that is, tunneling.
The discovery they have made is to open up for us to be able to build, tailor, so that we can actually study this little world that is beyond what we understand.
