Scientist Who Just Won Physics Nobel: 'Surprise of My Life'

More Nobel winners were announced on Tuesday, this time for physics. John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis won for research into quantum mechanical tunneling. Clarke conducted his research at the University of California-Berkeley; Martinis at UC-Santa Barbara; and Devoret also at UC-Santa Barbara, as well as Yale. "To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life," Clarke told reporters after being told of his win, per the AP. The Nobel committee said that the laureates' work provides opportunities to develop "the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors."

"It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises," said Olle Eriksson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics. "It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation of all digital technology." This is the 119th time the prize has been awarded. Last year, artificial intelligence pioneers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton won the physics prize for helping create the building blocks of machine learning.

On Monday, Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries about how the immune system knows to attack germs and not our bodies. Nobel announcements continue with the chemistry prize on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday, while the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be revealed on Oct. 13. The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite who founded the prizes. The prizes carry a cash award of nearly $1.2 million.