2025 Nobel Prizes: quantum tunneling, metal-organic frameworks and immune tolerance

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for their discoveries on peripheral immune tolerance and the role of regulatory T cells, which prevent the immune system from attacking the body itself.

The Physics prize went to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for demonstrating macroscopic quantum tunneling and energy quantization in an electrical circuit, work underlying today’s superconducting quantum processors. The Chemistry prize honored Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi for developing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), porous materials capable of capturing gases or extracting water from air.

The Nobel Prize in Literature went to Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai.

Communicating these advances without oversimplifying them — or promising imminent applications that don’t yet exist — is one of science journalism’s core responsibilities.

Source: The Nobel Prize.