John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday, October 7, for research into quantum mechanical tunneling. Clarke conducted his research at the University of California, Berkeley; Martinis at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Devoret at Yale and also at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life,” Clarke told reporters at the announcement by phone after being told of his win.

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. It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation of all digital technology,” said Olle Eriksson, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

It is the 119^th 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 on Monday 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 and the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics on October 13.

The award ceremony will be held December 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 priceless prestige and a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly $1.2 million).