Michel Devoret
French–American physicist (born 1953)
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Devoret shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Clarke and John M. Martinis for their joint work on macroscopic quantum phenomena in superconducting circuits.
Early life and education
Michel Henri Devoret was born on 5 March 1953 in Paris. He has stated that his parents were of Jewish background, even though they were not religious.
Devoret graduated with an engineer's degree in 1975 from École nationale supérieure des télécommunications (now Télécom Paris). He then obtained a DEA (Diplôme d'études approfondies) in Quantum Optics in 1976, followed by a Ph.D. in Quantum Condensed Matter Physics in 1982, both from the University of Orsay (now Paris-Saclay University). He performed his doctoral research at CEA Saclay in the group of Anatole Abragam, under the supervision of Neil S. Sullivan.
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Career
Devoret worked as a postdoctoral researcher in John Clarke's group at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1982 to 1984. Together, with John M. Martinis, a graduate student at the time, they demonstrated for the first time the quantized energy levels of a Josephson junction in 1985.
Devoret then returned to France and founded the Quantronics group at the Orme des Merisiers laboratory of CEA Saclay together with Daniel Esteve and Cristian Urbina. The group measured the traversal time of tunnelling, invented an electron pump, observed the charge of Cooper pairs directly, and developed a type of qubit dubbed quantronium. They also observed the Ramsey fringes of quantronium.
In 1996, Devoret spent a research stay in the laboratory of Hans Mooij at Delft University of Technology.
Devoret became a professor at Yale University in 2002. At Yale University, Steven Girvin, Robert J. Schoelkopf, and Devoret devised a type of superconducting charge qubit called the transmon. In 2009, Devoret also pioneered fluxonium, which can be understood as a special type of flux qubit. In 2010, he also developed a microwave quantum limited amplifier for qubit readout and sensing.
He also participated in 2018 in an experiment demonstrating the interruption and reversal of quantum jumps in a superconducting artificial atom, providing new insights into the dynamics of quantum measurement.
From 2007 to 2012, Michel Devoret held the Chair of Mesoscopic Physics at the Collège de France where his inaugural lecture, "From the Atom to Quantum Machines," illustrated the connection between fundamental quantum phenomena and emerging quantum technologies. He resigned in 2013.
In 2023, he was named the Chief Scientist for Hardware at Google Quantum AI. In 2024, he moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara to serve as Professor of Physics.
Recognition
In 1970, Michel Devoret received the Prix de la Couronne française, an award recognizing young French researchers.