Express View on Physics Nobel: Small is big

When the great American physicist, Richard Feynman, made his famous remark, “nobody understands quantum mechanics”, he was only stating the limits of human intuition in understanding the ways of sub-atomic particles. Quantum mechanics forces humans to jettison the quest for familiarity when dealing with the universe at its smallest, most fundamental scale. However, over the years, the insights of quantum systems have informed the working of some of the most transformative technologies. This year’s Nobel Prize winners in Physics are among the scientists who have chipped away at the indeterminacy of sub-atomic particles. Over the last four decades, John Clarke, a British physicist based at the University of California at Berkeley, Michel Devoret, a French scientist who has worked at Yale Uni