The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences seized a historic opportunity. One hundred years after the formulation of quantum mechanics, the Academy honored three laureates who greatly expanded the boundaries of the theory describing the microscopic properties of matter. John Clarke (University of California, Berkeley), 83; Michel Devoret (Yale University and University of California, Santa Barbara), 72; and John Martinis (University of California, Santa Barbara), 67, revealed surprising aspects of quantum mechanics in the mid-1980s. Their research opened the door to vast new areas of application, including the hypothetical quantum computer, which promises to solve complex calculations more efficiently due to its original operating principles.

While maintaining his academic career, Devoret has been assisting Google with this goal as the chief scientist of quantum hardware for the past four years. He followed in the footsteps of Martinis, who held the same position from 2014 to 2020 before founding his startup, Qolab, in 2022. Devoret was a co-author of a landmark paper published in the journal Nature in late 2019 with the Google team. The paper presented a high-performance quantum chip for the first time.

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