John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis’s experiments in the 1980s proved that the strange laws of quantum mechanics could govern not just subatomic particles but entire circuits visible to the eye. Their discovery of macroscopic quantum tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit won them the 2025 Physics Nobel Prize. This marks a significant interval since quantum mechanics last directly featured in a Physics Nobel, noticeable given the field’s enduring vitality, and at a time when the world anticipates profound revolutions in computing and communications. Their experiments at the University of California, demonstrated quantum behaviour in a circuit comprising two superconductors separated by an ultrathin insulating barrier, also known as a Josephson junction. In clas

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