Photo: UC Berkeley / CC BY 4.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)

John Clarke

ジョン・クラーク　/　じょん・くらーく

Physicist from United Kingdom

February 10, 1942 (age 84)　・　Cambridge, United Kingdom

physicist
materials scientist

My Take

What strikes me about John Clarke is how he turned a notoriously finicky tool into a whole field. Born in Cambridge in 1942 and trained there, he spent his career at Berkeley making superconducting devices, SQUIDs, actually usable for real measurement. Being called "the godfather of superconducting electronics" isn't a throwaway line; the Hughes Medal and Comstock Prize back it up. What I find quietly significant is that his 1980s team included Martinis and Devoret, names now central to quantum computing. Clarke isn't a household name, but a lot of today's quantum hardware traces back through his lab.

Overview

John Clarke (born 10 February 1942) is a British experimental physicist and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his various works on measurement devices based on superconductivity. Steven Girvin has called Clarke "the godfather of superconducting electronics". In the 1980s, Clarke led a research team that included John M. Martinis and Michel Devoret.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1. Profile

Name (English): John Clarke
Name (Japanese): ジョン・クラーク
Reading: じょん・くらーく
Born: February 10, 1942 (age 84)
Zodiac / Chinese zodiac: Aquarius / Horse
Origin: Cambridge, United Kingdom
Blood type: Private
Height: Private
Agency: Private
Occupation: physicist / materials scientist

2. Background

Elementary school: Private
Junior high: Private
High school: Private
University: University of Cambridge

Awards & achievements

Guggenheim Fellowship
Fellow of the Royal Society
2004 Hughes Medal
1987 Fritz London Award
1999 Comstock Prize in Physics
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1998 Joseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement Science

3. Relationships

Spouse: Private
Children: Private
Parents: Private
Siblings: Private

4. Personality

Motto

Private

6. Links

Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A7%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AF%E3%83%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AF%20(%E7%89%A9%E7%90%86%E5%AD%A6%E8%80%85)

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