Michel H. Devoret

A life in context

The person behind the prize

Devoret trained in France before joining John Clarke’s Berkeley laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher. He later developed superconducting quantum circuits through work in France and the United States. His career links careful experimental tests of quantum mechanics with the engineering of quantum devices.

The contribution

In the Berkeley experiments of the 1980s, he worked with Clarke and Martinis to demonstrate quantum tunnelling and energy quantisation in a superconducting electrical circuit.

The idea in plain language

Quantum tunnelling allows a system to pass through an energy barrier that classical physics would not let it cross. Energy quantisation means the allowed energies come in distinct levels rather than a smooth continuum.