John M. Martinis | |
|---|---|
 Martinis in 2025 | |
| Born | John Matthew Martinis 1958 (age 67–68) United States |
| Education | University of California, Berkeley (BS,PhD) |
| Awards |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| 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 theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara.[2][3] He led a team to develop a superconducting quantum computer atGoogle Quantum AI Lab, a partnership between UC Santa Barbara andGoogle. With theSycamore processor, they claimed the first evidence ofquantum supremacy in 2019.
He shared the 2025Nobel Prize in Physics withJohn Clarke andMichel Devoret for their joint work onmacroscopic quantum phenomena insuperconductors.[4]
John Matthew Martinis was born in 1958 and raised inSan Pedro, California.[5] He is ofCroatian descent. His father was aCroat fromKomiža on the island ofVis nearSplit, Croatia.[6] His father immigrated to the United States fromYugoslavia, escaping the communist regime.[5] His mother was born inSan Pedro to parents who had also emigrated fromCroatia.[7]
After graduating from theUniversity of California, Berkeley, Martinis received aBachelor of Science in physics in 1980 and aDoctor of Philosophy in physics in 1987.[8]
During his doctoral studies, he investigated the quantum behaviour of a macroscopic variable, the phase difference across aJosephson tunnel junction.[9][10] His doctorate advisor wasJohn Clarke.[10] During this time, he collaborated withMichel Devoret, apostdoctoral researcher at the time.[10]
In 1985, Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis presented their analysis of microwave pulses that demonstrated thequantized energy levels of a Josephson junction.[10] This work would later become the basis forsuperconducting quantum computing.[10]
He joined theCommissariat à l'Energie Atomique in Saclay, France,[11] for a first postdoc and then the Electromagnetic Technology division at theNational Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, where he worked onsuperconducting quantum interference device (SQUIDs) amplifiers.[12][11]
Since 2004, Martinis has served on the faculty of theUniversity 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 namedScience 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 aquantum computer using superconductingqubits.[13][14] He and his team published a paper inNature in 2019,[15] where they presented how they achievedquantum supremacy for the first time using theSycamore processor, a 53-qubit quantum processor.[16] Martinis resigned from Google in April 2020 after being reassigned to an advisory role.[17][13]
In 2020, Martinis joinedSilicon Quantum Computing, a start-up founded in Australia by ProfessorMichelle Simmons.[18] In 2022, he founded Qolab, a quantum computing private company based on semiconductor chip manufacturing.[19]
In 2014, he shared theFritz London Memorial Prize withMichel Devoret andRobert J. Schoelkopf.[20]
Martinis was chosen forNature's 10,a list of people who mattered for science in 2019.[21]
In 2021, he received theJohn Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and Their Applications.[22]
In 2025, he received theNobel Prize in Physics alongside his doctoral advisorJohn Clarke andMichel Devoret for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.[4]
| International | |
|---|---|
| Academics | |
| Other | |
