Biography:Michel Devoret

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Michel Devoret
Devoret in 2017
Born
Michel Henri Devoret

1953 (age 72–73)
Paris, France
EducationTélécom Paris (Dipl.Ing.)
University of Orsay (DEA, PhD)
Known forTransmon
Fluxonium
Quantum limited amplification
AwardsAmpère Prize (1991)
John Bell Prize (2013)
Fritz London Memorial Prize (2014)
Micius Quantum Prize (2021)
Comstock Prize in Physics (2024)
Nobel Prize in Physics (2025)
Scientific career
FieldsCondensed matter physics
Quantum information
Quantum measurements
InstitutionsCollège de France
Yale University
University of California, Santa Barbara
ThesisMise en évidence d'un ordre orientationnel de type vitreux dans l'hydrogène et le deutérium solides[1] (1982)
Doctoral advisorNeil S. Sullivan
Doctoral studentsVincent Bouchiat[2]

Michel Henri Devoret[3] (fr; born 1953) is a French-American physicist.[4][5] He is Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara,[6][7] and Professor Emeritus of Applied Physics at Yale University.[8] He serves as the Chief Scientist for Quantum Hardware at Google Quantum AI.[9] He is known for the development of various superconducting quantum computing architectures, including the quantronium, the transmon, and the fluxonium.

He 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.[10]

Early life and education

Devoret was born in Paris, France, in 1953.[11][12]

Devoret graduated with an engineer's degree in telecommunications from École nationale supérieure des télécommunications (ENST, now known as Télécom Paris) in Paris in 1975.[13][11] He obtained a graduate diploma (DEA) in quantum optics from the University of Orsay (present-day Paris-Saclay University), followed by a doctorate in condensed matter physics in 1982.[11][13] He performed his doctoral research at CEA Saclay in the group of Anatole Abragam,[14][15] under the supervision of Neil S. Sullivan.[15]

Career

Devoret worked as a postdoctoral researcher in John Clarke's group at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1982 to 1984.[11] 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.[11][16]

Devoret then returned to France and founded the Quantronics group at the Orme des Merisiers laboratory of CEA Saclay together with Daniel Esteve (fr) 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.[11][17][18]

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.[19][20] In 2009, Devoret also pioneered fluxonium[21], 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.[22][23]

Devoret was appointed to the Collège de France in 2007 and resigned in 2013.[11][17] In 2023, he was named the Chief Scientist for Hardware at Google Quantum AI.[9] In 2024, he moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara to serve as Professor of Physics.[6]

Honors and awards

Devoret was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003,[3] of the French Academy of Sciences in 2007[24] and of the National Academy of Sciences in 2023.[4] In 2008, he was invested as a Knight of the Legion of Honour.[25]

Devoret and Esteve were awarded the Ampère Prize by the French Academy of Science in 1991.[26] In 1995, Devoret received the Descartes-Huygens Prize from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science.[27] Devoret, Esteve, Yasunobu Nakamura and Johan Mooj were awarded the Europhysics-Agilent Prize by the European Physical Society in 2004.[28] In 2013, Devoret and Schoelkopf were awarded with the John Stewart Bell Prize for "Fundamental and pioneering experimental advances in entangling superconducting qubits and microwave photons, and their application to quantum information processing."[29]

In 2014, Devoret shared the Fritz London Memorial Prize with Martinis and Schoelkopf.[30] The Micius Quantum Prize was jointly awarded in 2021 to Devoret, Clarke and Nakamura.[31] In 2016, Devoret was awarded the Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize.[13]

The 2024 Comstock Prize in Physics was awarded to Devoret and Schoelkopf.[32] In 2025 Devoret, Clarke and Martinis were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their joint discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.[10]

References

  1. ↑ Abragam, Anatole (1982). "Magnétisme nucléaire renforcé". https://www.college-de-france.fr/sites/default/files/media/document/2022-12/AN_83_abragam.pdf. 
  2. ↑ "Michel Devoret" (in fr). https://theses.fr/032350589. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Michel Henri Devoret". 6 December 2018. https://www.amacad.org/person/michel-henri-devoret. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Michel H. Devoret". https://www.nasonline.org/directory-entry/michel-h-devoret-gj5exl/. 
  5. ↑ "Membership Overview". National Academy of Sciences. https://www.nasonline.org/membership/membership-overview/. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Michel Devoret | Department of Physics | UC Santa Barbara". https://www.physics.ucsb.edu/people/michel-devoret. 
  7. ↑ "Michel Devoret – Andrew D. White Professors-at-Large Program" (in en-US). https://adwhiteprofessors.cornell.edu/professors-at-large/michel-devoret/. 
  8. ↑ "Michel Devoret" (in en). https://engineering.yale.edu/research-and-faculty/faculty-directory/michel-devoret. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Googler Michel Devoret awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics" (in en). https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/googler-michel-devoret-awarded-the-nobel-prize-in-physics/. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Physics Nobel Prize (7 October 2025). Announcement of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics. Retrieved 7 October 2025 – via YouTube.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 "Michel Devoret". Collège de France. https://www.college-de-france.fr/en/chair/michel-devoret-mesoscopic-physics-statutory-chair/biography. 
  12. ↑ "Nobel Prize in Physics 2025" (in en-US). https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2025/devoret/facts/. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 "Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize" (in en). https://www.aalto.fi/en/ovl-memorial-prize. 
  14. ↑ Hassinger, Sebastian (11 September 2024) (in en). The New Quantum Era. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN 978-1-0981-4938-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=cE8hEQAAQBAJ&dq=martinis+phd+%22advisor%22+clarke+devoret&pg=PA113. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Abragam, A. (2000) (in fr). De la physique avant toute chose. Odile Jacob. ISBN 978-2-7381-9064-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=WNdHAwAAQBAJ&dq=michel+devoret+neil+sullivan+abragam&pg=PA255. 
  16. ↑ Hassinger, Sebastian (11 September 2024) (in en). The New Quantum Era. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". ISBN 978-1-0981-4938-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=cE8hEQAAQBAJ&dq=martinis+phd+%22advisor%22+clarke+devoret&pg=PA113. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 "2025 Nobel Prize Resources" (in en). https://www.aip.org/nobel-prize. 
  18. ↑ Mooij, Hans (1 December 2004). "Superconducting quantum bits" (in en-GB). https://physicsworld.com/superconducting-quantum-bits/. 
  19. ↑ "Yale's Michel H. Devoret wins 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics | Yale News" (in en). 7 October 2025. https://news.yale.edu/2025/10/07/yales-michel-h-devoret-wins-2025-nobel-prize-physics. 
  20. ↑ Elsayyid, Joseph (6 February 2025). "Yale Quantum Institute marks ten years" (in en). https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/02/05/yale-quantum-institute-marks-ten-years/. 
  21. ↑ Manucharyan, Vladimir E.; Koch, Jens; Glazman, Leonid I.; Devoret, Michel H. (2 October 2009). "Fluxonium: single cooper-pair circuit free of charge offsets". Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 326 (5949): 113–116. doi:10.1126/science.1175552. PMID 19797655. Bibcode: 2009Sci...326..113M. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1175552. 
  22. ↑ Roy, Ananda; Devoret, Michel (July 2018). "Quantum-limited parametric amplification with Josephson circuits in the regime of pump depletion". Phys. Rev. B (American Physical Society) 98 (4). doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.98.045405. Bibcode: 2018PhRvB..98d5405R. https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.98.045405. 
  23. ↑ "Yale-designed amplifier pushes the boundary of quantum physics". Yale University. May 5, 2010. https://news.yale.edu/2010/05/05/yale-designed-amplifier-pushes-boundary-quantum-physics. 
  24. ↑ "Michel Devoret" (in fr). 1 December 2007. https://www.academie-sciences.fr/michel-devoret. 
  25. ↑ "Décret du 11 juillet 2008 portant promotion et nomination". https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000019160503. 
  26. ↑ "40 ans du Prix Ampère". 2016. https://www.academie-sciences.fr/pdf/prix/ampere_181016.pdf. 
  27. ↑ "Prix Descartes-Huygens/Descartes-Huygensprijs Liste des lauréat(e)s". https://www.academie-sciences.fr/pdf/prix/PrixDH_laureats.pdf. 
  28. ↑ "In Brief". Physics Today 57 (7): 73–74. 1 July 2004. doi:10.1063/1.2408584. ISSN 0031-9228. https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/57/7/73/918002/In-Brief. Retrieved 7 October 2025. 
  29. ↑ "2013: Devoret and Schoelkopf". http://cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca/bell_prize/devoret_schoelkopf.html. 
  30. ↑ "Fritz London Memorial Prize". https://phy.duke.edu/fritz-london-memorial-prize. 
  31. ↑ "John Clarke Is A Co-Recipient Of The Micius Quantum Prize | Physics". https://physics.berkeley.edu/news-events/news/john-clarke-co-recipient-of-micius-quantum-prize. 
  32. ↑ "Noteworthy – Select Prizes and Awards to Members". 14 May 2024. https://www.amacad.org/bulletin/spring-2024/noteworthy. 


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