Google's chief scientist for quantum hardware wins Nobel Prize in Physics

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded Google's chief scientist for quantum hardware, Michel Devore, the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was awarded the prize along with former Google employee John Martinis and University of California professor John Clark, Engadget reports.

This is the second year in a row that current or former Google employees have won the award. Last year, a former Google vice president won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared between researchers at Google DeepMind.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for "the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electrical circuit."

Google further explains in its blog that the researchers have created "a superconducting electrical circuit… with a special feature known as a Josephson junction that can be used to create and manipulate these quantum phenomena."

"For Google’s Quantum AI team, this Nobel Prize is not just a celebration of historic science, it’s a celebration of the foundation of our current work on superconducting quantum computing. Josephson Junctions form the basis for today’s superconducting quantum bits (qubits), including those we’re making at Google Quantum AI. Michel and John's work enabled our progress so far, including the breakthrough Willow quantum chip we announced last year, and our 2019 milestone demonstrating that a quantum computer could complete a benchmark calculation impossible on a classical computer. It’s also guiding our path forward, as we progress on our hardware roadmap and advance our mission to build quantum computing for otherwise unsolvable problems," Google said in a statement.