John Clarke

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.

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

Occupation

physicist / materials scientist

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

Motto

Private

• 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)

Tags

• physicist
• materials scientist

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.