These Nobel Prize Winners Paved The Way For Quantum Computing

In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, a startup using AI to track pathogens, a quantum cooling breakthrough and more. To get The Prototype in your inbox, sign up here . Goeran Johansson, Member of the Nobel Committee for Physics, addresses a press conference on the awarding of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics AFP via Getty Images

T hree researchers who paved the way for today’s quantum computers won the Nobel Prize in Physics this week. John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis will share the approximately $1.2 million award thanks to groundbreaking experiments they conducted in the 1980s.

In this work, they built a superconducting electric circuit, which allows electricity to flow through without resistance. In tha