UPSC Prelims 2026 Q81: Nobel Prize 2025 Laureates — Explained
'X', born in the UK, was conferred the Nobel Prize in 2025. He was a professor in an American university when this prize was announced. Identify 'X':
- Michel H. Devoret
- Richard Robson
- John Clarke
- Joel Mokyr
Answer: (c) John Clarke
Statement-wise explanation
- a: incorrect — Michel H. Devoret shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Clarke and John M. Martinis. He was born in Paris, France, in 1953, not in the UK. He holds posts at Yale University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, so only the American-university half of the clue fits him.
- b: incorrect — Richard Robson shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Susumu Kitagawa and Omar M. Yaghi for developing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). He was born in Glusburn, England, in 1937, so he fits the UK-birth clue. But he is a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, not at an American university.
- c: correct — John Clarke was born in Cambridge, England, in 1942 and studied at Cambridge University. He is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics 'for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit'. He is the only option who fits both clues.
- d: incorrect — Joel Mokyr shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for explaining innovation-driven economic growth. He teaches at Northwestern University in the USA, so he fits the American-university clue. But he was born in Leiden, the Netherlands, not in the UK.
How to eliminate
The question has two filters: born in the UK, and teaching at an American university when the prize was announced. Each wrong option fails exactly one of them. Robson was born in the UK but works in Australia. Devoret (born in France) and Mokyr (born in the Netherlands) work in the USA but were not born in the UK. So knowing just one fact about each name is not enough. You need both facts for at least two names. A partial shortcut: the name 'Michel' points to French origin, which removes one option. Beyond that, the question has to be solved from memory. The facts to remember: Clarke was born in Cambridge and teaches at UC Berkeley. Robson was born in England and teaches in Melbourne. For Nobel questions, learn each laureate's birthplace and current institution, not just the prize field and the work cited.
Know more
2025 Nobel Prizes in science and economics: who, where from, where based
UPSC now asks Nobel questions that combine two facts about a laureate, such as nationality and institution. Learn the full grid below.
| Prize | Laureate | Born in | Institution (2025) | Work cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Physics | John Clarke | Cambridge, UK | UC Berkeley, USA | Macroscopic quantum tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit |
| Physics | Michel H. Devoret | Paris, France | Yale and UC Santa Barbara, USA | Same |
| Physics | John M. Martinis | USA | UC Santa Barbara, USA | Same |
| Chemistry | Susumu Kitagawa | Japan | Kyoto University | Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) |
| Chemistry | Richard Robson | Glusburn, UK | University of Melbourne, Australia | Same |
| Chemistry | Omar M. Yaghi | Amman, Jordan | UC Berkeley, USA | Same |
| Economics | Joel Mokyr | Leiden, Netherlands | Northwestern University, USA | Prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress |
| Economics | Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt | France; Canada | Collège de France / INSEAD / LSE; Brown University | Theory of sustained growth through creative destruction |
The physics prize. In the mid-1980s, Clarke, Devoret and Martinis did experiments at Berkeley on a superconducting electrical circuit with a Josephson junction. They showed that the whole circuit tunnelled through an energy barrier and absorbed energy only in fixed amounts (quanta). Quantum behaviour had normally been seen only at the scale of atoms. This was the first clear evidence of it in a circuit you can hold in your hand. The work underlies superconducting qubits, used in many of today's quantum computers.
The chemistry prize. MOFs are crystals built from metal ions joined by organic linker molecules. They have large internal spaces that can capture CO2, pull water out of desert air, or store gases.
The economics prize. Mokyr used economic history to explain why innovation became self-sustaining after the Industrial Revolution. Aghion and Howitt built a mathematical model of Schumpeter's 'creative destruction'.
In the news
The 2025 Nobel Prizes were announced in October 2025, seven months before the May 2026 Prelims. The physics prize got wide coverage in India because of its link to quantum computing and the National Quantum Mission.
NCERT Concepts to Revise
- Creative destruction: One of the laureates named in the options won the 2025 economics prize. That prize honoured a model of Schumpeter's creative destruction.