John Clarke (physicist)

In the 1980s, Clarke led a research team that included John M. Martinis and Michel Devoret. Their discoveries in macroscopic quantum phenomena using the Josephson effect earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2025.

Education and career

John Clarke was born on 10 February 1942 in Cambridge, England. He attended The Perse School, before embarking on a Natural Sciences degree at Christ's College, Cambridge. He graduated with a B.A. in Physics in 1964, and then studied for a Ph.D. in Physics in the Royal Society Mond Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.

In 1965, Clarke became one of the first students to enter the newly founded Darwin College, Cambridge, and was the first president of the Darwin College students' association. While conducting his doctoral work under Brian Pippard, Clarke developed a very sensitive voltmeter, which he later called "SLUG" (Superconducting Low-inductance Undulatory Galvanometer). He obtained his doctorate in 1968. Clarke has said at various times that his work was influenced by Nobel laureate Brian Josephson, who predicted the Josephson effect in 1962 and was also a previous student of Pippard.

After completing his doctorate, Clarke gained a postdoctoral research position at the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently worked at Berkeley for his whole academic career, as Assistant Professor (1969), Associate Professor (1971), and as Professor of Physics (1973–2010). In 1969, Clarke also joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, eventually retiring as a faculty senior scientist in the Materials Sciences Division in 2010.

Clarke's association with the University of Cambridge continued, after he moved to the United States. In 1972, he was elected a Fellow of Christ's College; in 1989, he was a visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and in 1998 was elected a by-fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. Clarke was awarded a D.Sc. from the University of Cambridge in 2003. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of Christ's College in 1997, and of Darwin College in 2023.