Michel Devoret

Michel Devoret graduated with an electrical engineer diploma in 1975 from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris and with an MSc in atomic and molecular physics in 1976 from the University of Paris. He then did his PhD research on the NMR of solid hydrogen at very low temperatures in the laboratory of Prof. Anatole Abragam at CEA Saclay. Working as a post-doc -- with then graduate student John Martinis -- in the group of Prof. John Clarke at Berkeley, he demonstrated in 1984 that Josephson circuits behaved quantum-mechanically and, in particular, exhibited quantum energy levels, the basis of today’s superconducting qubits. Back at Saclay, he founded with Daniel Esteve and Cristian Urbina his own research group on mesoscopic superconductivity and single charge effects, resulting in the Cooper pair box and the quantronium qubit. In 2002, he moved to Yale University where his group developed new quantum devices like quantum limited amplifiers and artificial atoms, like the transmon and the fluxonium. Recently, his group concentrated on the physics of quantum jumps and the error correction of a logical qubit. Michel has presently an advisory role at Google Quantum AI and is moving his lab to UC Santa Barbara, where he is now a professor. He is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of several prizes, including the Ampère Prize of the French Academy of Sciences, the John Bell Prize, the Fritz London Memorial Prize, and the Comstock Prize. In October 2025, he was awarded the Nobel Prize, together with John Clarke and John Martinis, for the discovery of macroscopic quantum tunneling and energy quantization.

Professor · University of California, Santa Barbara