Michel Devoret, Frederick W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics and Samuel Moseley, visiting research fellow in physics, and a member of Yale’s Wright Lab; along with Anna Marie Pyle, Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Professor of Chemistry, were recently elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS)–one of the highest honors bestowed on a U.S. scientist or engineer–in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Devoret, Moseley, and Pyle are among 120 new members, including 23 international members, elected this year to the academy, which was established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. The new members bring the total number of active members to 2,565 and the total number of international members to 526.
Devoret, who has been a member of the Yale faculty since 2002, has conducted seminal research on qubits, the “artificial atoms” at the heart of quantum information science. Along with Yale colleagues, including Robert Schoelkopf (Sterling Professor of Applied Physics and professor of physics) and Steven Girvin (Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics), Devoret has done pioneering work in the field of superconducting qubits with controllable dynamics. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of the Micius Quantum Prize (together with John Clarke and Yasunobu Nakamura), the Ampere Prize of the French Academy of Science (with Daniel Esteve), the Descartes-Huygens Prize of the Royal Academy of Science of the Netherlands, the Europhysics-Agilent Prize of the European Physical Society (with Esteve, Hans Mooij, and Nakamura), and the Olli Lounasmaa Memorial Prize of Aalto University. He is also a recipient of the John Stewart Bell Prize (with Schoelkopf) and the Fritz London Memorial Prize (with John Martinis and Schoelkopf). Devoret is a member of the Yale Quantum Institute.
Moseley, a research affiliate at Wright Laboratory, was a key member of NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer science and development team and he invented and led the advance of cryogenic X-ray microcalorimeters, which are central to the scientific capability of current and future X-ray astrophysics missions. He also led the creation of microshutter arrays for the James Webb Space Telescope. He has received the Joseph Weber Award of the American Astronomical Society, the George Goddard Prize of the international society of optics and photonics (SPIE) and was conferred the rank of Distinguished Senior Professional by President Barack Obama.
This story was excerpted from the Yale News story of May 3, 2023 by Jim Shelton. See below for links to the full story and related information.