In the 1950s through the 1980s people thought of quantum effects as occurring in very small things and as a source of noise-you had to understand quantum theory to build transistors. People thought of quantum mechanics as a nuisance. He and Brassard discovered methods-like quantum coin-tossing and quantum entanglement-that turned the perceived handicaps of quantum reality into a powerful tool.
Although there are always some philosophical assumptions behind this conclusion, it's an assumption that isn't contradicted by anything we've ever measured under any conditions: not with human senses, not with laboratory equipment, not with telescopes or observatories, not under the influence of nature alone nor with specific human intervention. Reality exists, and our scientific description of that reality came about precisely because those measurements, conducted anywhere or at any time, is consistent with that very description of reality itself.
The Nobel prize in physics 2025 has been awarded to British, French and American scientists for their work on quantum mechanics. John Clarke, a British physicist based at the University of California at Berkeley, Michel Devoret, a French physicist based at Yale University, and John Martinis, of the University of California Santa Barbara, share the 11m Swedish kronor (about 871,400) prize announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
Quantum mechanics is unquestionably a robust and successful theory - so far, all its predictions have held, and scientists can build powerful technologies based on it. Yet, understanding what it tells us about the nature of reality and how we experience it has proven tricky. Physicists and philosophers have been grappling with it for a century, ironing out some of the early ambiguities, but some conceptual problems remain.
