John Martinis: The Greek-American quantum physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics

Those who know John Martinis well speculate that as soon as he learned that he, along with John Clark and Michel Deborah - two fellow physicists from the past - won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he simply smiled.

The Greek-American professor, who is an authority on quantum computers, has collaborated with Google and for the last five years has been trying together with Professor Michelle Simmons for something very big... The two of them and Simmons' company are trying to build the first commercial quantum computer, a challenge that is not at all easy.

Raised in the US, the 67-year-old physics professor studied at the University of Berkeley, where he had Clark as his supervisor during his PhD.

At the same university, he also met Michel Deborah, with whom he collaborated on the quantum behavior of a macroscopic variable.

In the years that followed, Martinis worked at leading research institutions such as CEA Saclay in Paris and NIST in the USA, where he developed an X-ray detection technique.

He did this using a superconducting edge-transition sensor microcalorimeter with electrothermal feedback.

In 2002, at the age of 44, Martinis began to work on the vision of building the first quantum computer and two years later moved to California, as a professor of experimental physics at the University of Santa Barbara.

Then his path to the top began, which included a lot of hard work and a vision that needed the help of a giant to become a reality.

The Google years and research

This giant was Google, which approached him ten years later and the Greek-American professor, together with his team, signed a deal worth tens of millions of dollars to build the first quantum computer with superconducting qubits.

Together with his collaborators, they worked endless hours, having the latest technological achievements at their disposal, and in 2019 they achieved what many considered almost impossible.

They completed the construction of a quantum computer, which had the ability to solve a specific calculation in three minutes and twenty seconds, for which a classical supercomputer would need several millennia to complete.

He left Google in 2020 but, together with Clark and Deborah, continued to work on quantum mechanics while he began his collaboration with Professor Michelle Simons' SQC to build the first commercial quantum computer.

"If we can successfully build one," he said at the time, "this will be a major achievement with a huge impact on humanity."

Five years later, the persistent Greek-American physicist, whose contribution to the science of physics and quantum mechanics has been recognized internationally, received, together with his two colleagues, the highest distinction of the Swedish Academy for their work, the Nobel Prize.