Google CEO Sundar Pichai congratulated physicists Michel Devoret, John Martinis, and John Clarke after they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. He said he feels fortunate to work at a company that counts five Nobel laureates among its ranks — three of them recognized in just the past two years.
Pichai noted that Devoret is the chief scientist of Quantum Hardware at Google Quantum AI and Martinis led the lab’s hardware team for many years. Other Nobel laureates from Google include Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who won the 2024 Chemistry prize for their work on protein structure prediction, and Geoff Hinton, who received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on artificial intelligence.
READ: Non-founder CEO Sundar Pichai enters billionaire list (
The 2025 physics Nobel laureates won the prize for their work on quantum physics. The trio carried out experiments in the mid-1980s with an electronic circuit built of superconductors and demonstrated that quantum mechanics could also influence everyday objects under certain conditions.
The field of quantum physics is believed to have the potential to help solve some of humanity’s most pressing concerns, such as tackling climate change. However, it also faces challenges, including improving the accuracy of its chips, and timelines for commercially viable quantum computing remain disputed.
“This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics has provided opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the prize, said in a statement.
READ: Sundar Pichai urges Google employees to embrace AI amid new coding guidelines (
In his post, Pichai also mentioned that he recently visited the company’s Quantum AI lab in Santa Barbara, where Devoret is currently the chief scientist. “I was just at our quantum lab in Santa Barbara yesterday seeing the incredible progress, hope they are celebrating today. Feeling lucky this morning to work at a company that has had 5 Nobel Laureates among our ranks — 3 prizes in 2 years!” he said.
Devoret, who is also a professor at Yale University, continues to play a key role in Google’s efforts to build scalable and fault-tolerant quantum computers. Martinis, on the other hand, is a former Google researcher who led the team that achieved “quantum supremacy” in 2019.
Martinis left Google in 2020 and later co-founded Qolab, a quantum computing startup, in 2022.
The Nobel Prize in Physics was the second Nobel Prize awarded this week. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to American scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi from Japan, on Monday.