Retired UC Berkeley physics professor John Clarke and two former colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for a 1980s discovery that ultimately led to the inventions of super fast quantum computers and the iPhone.

Clarke, 83, who spent most of his career at UC Berkeley, received the call from Sweden announcing his award at 2:09 a.m. and almost didn’t answer it.

“I wasn’t quite sure at the beginning whether or not this was a sort of a junk call, but it became clear that it was real,” Clarke told reporters during a news conference Tuesday. “I was sitting there just feeling completely stunned. It never occurred to me in my entire life that anything like this would ever happen.”

The prize is shared among Clarke, who led the research, and two former students: former post doctorate

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