The Yale Quantum Institute (YQI) last week hosted a low-key Nobel celebration of sorts, when 2025 Nobel physics co-laureate Michel Devoret returned to campus for an informal but intimate visit.
On Nov. 24, Devoret, the Frederick W. Beinecke Professor Emeritus of Applied Physics at Yale and professor of physics at the University of California-Santa Barbara — and a current YQI member — shared breakfast and insight with more than 100 students, faculty, and staff, who pulled up chairs around him.
A. Douglas Stone, YQI’s deputy director, informally interviewed Devoret about his groundbreaking research in the 1980s with fellow Nobel laureates John Clarke (of the University of California-Berkeley) and John Martinis (University of California-Santa Barbara), which proved that quantum physics could be shown on a macroscopic, or visible, level, in a circuit.
During the conversation, Devoret also reminisced about his decades of scientific research at Yale, helping to develop the field of circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit QED), an approach to quantum computing that uses particles of microwave light in a superconducting microwave resonator.
In the spirit of the event, YQI had plenty of Swedish Fish candy on hand after breakfast.
The Royal Swedish National Academy will present the Nobel to Devoret, Clarke, and Martinis later this month. Several Yale physicists are planning to attend the Nobel ceremony, including Steven Girvin, Robert Schoelkopf, Leonid Glazman, and Jack Harris.
