The University of California made history this week, as its faculty and alumni won five Nobel Prizes across medicine, physics and chemistry — the most ever awarded to a single institution in one year.
On Monday, Frederick Ramsdell, a UC San Diego and UCLA alumnus, shared the Nobel Prize in medicine for identifying immune system cells that prevent the body from attacking itself — a breakthrough that transformed understanding of autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes and lupus.
A day later, UC Berkeley emeritus professor John Clarke, UC Santa Barbara professor Michel H. Devoret and UC Santa Barbara emeritus professor John M. Martinis won the Nobel Prize in physics
“To put it mildly, it was the surprise of my life,” Clarke said in a phone call with the Nobel committee that was broadcast live.
He added that it “had not occurred to us in any way” that groundbreaking research — a discovery that paved the way for modern quantum computers — would be worthy of the honor.
Then on Wednesday, UC Berkeley chemist Omar Yaghi received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for inventing “metal-organic frameworks,” materials capable of capturing carbon dioxide, storing hydrogen and even harvesting clean drinking water from desert air.
“There is nothing like this, it’s an astonishment,” Yaghi said of receiving the prize, calling it “a feeling you don’t have often.”
These awards bring the University of California’s total to 75 Nobel Prizes since 1934.
“These awards are not only great honors — they are tangible evidence of the work happening across the University of California every day,” UC President James B. Milliken said in a statement.
UC leaders and researchers credited federal funding as vital to these breakthroughs. But they also noted that the Trump administration this year canceled thousands of research grants across the U.S. — and while more than $500 million worth at UC have been restored by court order, they warned that ongoing cuts to science funding threaten future progress.
“This is going to cripple science, and it is going to be disastrous if this continues,” Clarke said. “It may take a decade to get back to where we were, say, half a year ago.”