As the 2025 Nobel Prizes were announced, California emerged as the undisputed epicenter of world-changing scientific achievement. The future of human progress is being written in the state's laboratories and universities, but continued success depends on both public and private investment.
All three winners of the physics prize share California roots. John Clarke is an emeritus professor of physics at UC Berkeley. John Martinis earned his doctorate at Berkeley before joining the faculty at UC Santa Barbara. And Michel Devoret worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Clarke's Berkeley laboratory during their groundbreaking experiments in the 1980s and now is professor at UC Santa Barbara. Their work laid the foundation for quantum computing, which could revolutionize how computers tackle complex problems.
In chemistry, Berkeley professor Omar Yaghi shared the award with two other global researchers for their work developing metal-organic frameworks. Those molecular constructions could provide new technology to address climate change and reduce resource scarcity.
Finally, Fred Ramsdell, who earned his Ph.D. at UCLA and co-founded Sonoma Biotherapeutics, shared the medicine prize with two researchers at other institutions. They identified regulatory T cells that hold promise in treating cancer and autoimmune diseases.
When Ramsdell co-founded Sonoma Biotherapeutics a few years ago, another founder lived in Healdsburg. "He often found inspiration while looking out at the beautiful countryside of Sonoma County during Zoom calls. Thus, the origin of the company name," Managing Director Stephanie
Jacobson explained. The company now has offices in South San Francisco and Seattle.
California has been a hotbed of Nobel success for decades. That's no accident. Nobel laureates come here and win prizes here because Californians understand that scientific excellence comes from ongoing investment and public support.
That support is in a precarious position today. State budget shortfalls have strained funding for higher education. Worse, an anti-science movement in the Republican Party has the Trump administration threatening federal funding for research.
Clarke, one of the new physics laureates, warned about federal science cuts. "This will cripple much of United States science research," he said during an interview after learning he'd won the Nobel Prize. "It may take a decade to get back to where we were, say, a half a year ago."
This year's Nobel success should serve as a strong reminder of why state and federal governments should continue to invest in innovation. Most research grants do not produce a Nobel Prize. Some even wind up being duds. Experiments sometimes confirm amazing hypotheses that lead to major breakthroughs, but sometimes they show that a hypothesis was wrong. That is the nature of scientific progress. Even disproving a hypothesis has value.
The public, through its tax dollars, is not solely responsible for funding research. California fosters an ecosystem in which academia and industry can collaborate to advance knowledge and technology.
Industries that earn billions off discoveries made at state schools must look beyond their narrow, profitable niches and invest in a culture of research. That means endowing professorships, funding graduate fellowships, supporting STEM programs and creating opportunities for the next generation of scientists and doctors to thrive. Those things are not charity; they are enlightened self-interest.
This year's Nobel Prizes show what California and America can achieve when we commit to scientific excellence. Tomorrow's breakthroughs begin with the decisions that politicians and business leaders make today about funding, infrastructure and cultivating talent.