VIDEO: Watch President Milliken’s message congratulating UC’s record-breaking Nobel Prize winners
The University of California has set a new world record for the most Nobel Prizes awarded to one university system in a single year. Over the course of three days this month, UC faculty earned four Nobel Prizes — more than any other university in the world. With alumni included, UC-affiliated scholars took home five awards across medicine, physics, and chemistry.
The discoveries recognized this year include a better understanding of the immune system leading to lifesaving treatments for conditions like cancer and multiple sclerosis, to pioneering research that laid the foundation for quantum computing, to designing molecular materials that can help remove airborne pollution and harvest drinkable water from desert air.
“These remarkable achievements by five UC-affiliated Nobel Prize winners reflect the very best of the world-changing teaching, research, and public service happening across our University,” said UC President James B. Milliken. “Our nation and world will be better off because of these discoveries. More communities will have clean drinking water, more people will be protected from cyberattacks, and more patients will have access to better treatments for diseases like arthritis and multiple sclerosis.”
Each of these breakthroughs was made possible through decades of federal investment in university research — the same funding that has long fueled American innovation, economic growth, and scientific leadership. Today, that support is at risk as federal research funds are frozen or cut, and as the administration’s proposed budget reductions threaten to slow the very discoveries that keep the United States at the forefront of global leadership.
Earlier this year, UC launched the Speak Up for Science campaign to rebuild federal support for U.S. research and innovation and highlight how federal investment fuels world-class research that cures diseases, drives innovation, and keeps the United States a global leader.
UC and the Nobel Prize
Since 1934, 74 UC faculty and staff have been awarded 75 Nobel Prizes across medicine, physics, chemistry, economics and more. This year brings the total number of Nobel laureates affiliated with UC at the time of award to 49, the most of any institution in history.
UC’s 2025 Nobel laureates
- Frederick J. Ramsdell, UC San Diego and UCLA alumnus: An immunologist and scientific advisor with Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco who earned his bachelor’s degree from UC San Diego and his doctorate in microbiology and immunology from UCLA, Ramsdell was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, sharing it with Mary Brunkow of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.”
- John Clarke, UC Berkeley; John M. Martinis, UC Santa Barbara; and Michel H. Devoret, UC Santa Barbara: Clarke, an emeritus professor of physics; Martinis, an emeritus professor of physics; and Devoret, a professor of physics, were awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in physics, “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”
- Omar M. Yaghi, UC Berkeley: A chemist, Yaghi was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry, sharing it with Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University, Japan, “for the development of metal-organic frameworks.”
Federal funding for UC’s 2025 Nobel laureates
Federal research funding has long powered the University of California’s breakthroughs in science, medicine, and technology. UC’s achievements this year are the direct result of that partnership — decades of strategic investment by the American people that have saved lives, strengthened the economy, and expanded human knowledge.
The National Institutes of Health supported Dr. Ramsdell’s pioneering work identifying a genetic mutation that causes a fatal immune disorder. The National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Security Administration backed the research of Drs. Clarke, Martinis, and Devoret, whose discoveries helped lay the foundation for quantum computing. And the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense funded Dr. Yaghi’s advances in chemistry that are now being used to capture carbon and harvest drinking water from desert air.