2025-12-17: Through its origins and its purpose, the Nobel Prize links the engineering nation of Sweden with the world’s foremost research. This makes it particularly honourable when five of this year’s laureates visit us, including the three pioneers of quantum research who have received the Nobel Prize in Physics.
These have been remarkable days. Five of this year’s Nobel laureates have, following the celebrations in Stockholm, chosen to come to Gothenburg as invited guests of Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, to meet our researchers and also to give public lectures for a wider audience.
The Nobel laureate in Chemistry, Omar Yaghi, has through his research on metal–organic frameworks paved the way for technologies that can extract water from dry desert air, capture carbon dioxide, or neutralise toxic gases. The Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, Shimon Sakaguchi, has made discoveries about the human immune system that may lead to new treatments for autoimmune diseases. The three laureates in Physics – John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis – have carried out groundbreaking research in quantum science.
All of them are examples of fundamental research that, in the long term and through various applications, can generate immense benefit for society — “the greatest benefit to humankind”, as Alfred Nobel wrote in his will. I believe that those of us who are custodians of the legacy of William Chalmers can recognise ourselves in that spirit. Eighty-four years before Nobel wrote his will, William Chalmers expressed a similar conviction in his own testament: that knowledge in engineering and the natural sciences has the power to improve society.
The work of the physics laureates in particular is something we at Chalmers draw heavily upon in our efforts to develop quantum computers and quantum technology. This work is carried out at the university within the framework of WACQT (the Wallenberg Centre for Quantum Technology), within the testbed at Chalmers Next Labs, and in other activities. The number of actors involved is steadily growing, and last autumn the spin-out company Atlantic Quantum was acquired by Google. Increasingly, people speak of the Chalmers quantum cluster — a dynamic academic environment that we hope and believe will continue to develop and grow in significance. It is, of course, an environment we are immensely proud to present to our visiting Nobel laureates — many of whom also have personal ties to several of our leading quantum researchers.
Here, they can see their own ideas being carried forward by others, as part of the ongoing global relay of scientific discovery.
Martin Nilsson Jacobi, President and CEO of Chalmers University of Technology
Under the headline "President’s perspective" the President and CEO for Chalmers University of Technology, shares his reflections on current topics that concern education, research and utilisation.