Croatian Embassy in Sweden honors Nobel physics laureate John Martinis

The Croatian Embassy in Sweden hosted a special reception on Thursday celebrating American physicist John Martinis, one of this year’s Nobel Prize winners in Physics and a laureate with deep Croatian roots.

The event, held at the Stockholm Historical Museum, brought together government officials, members of the Diplomatic Corps, and prominent representatives of Sweden’s Croatian community. Martinis attended as the guest of honor.

Martinis said he hopes to serve as “a good scientific ambassador” for Croatia and inspire young people interested in STEM fields. He also shared how his Croatian background influenced his life and career.

Martinis’s father, a fisherman from Komiža on the island of Vis, and his mother, a second-generation American of Croatian descent, passed down a practical, hands-on approach to problem-solving.

“A lot of it comes from my father,” Martinis said. “He had a practical knowledge of building things and fixing his boat. Growing up, he was always working on our house, and he passed that knowledge to me. I enjoy building things, building experiments, and that gave me a lot of experience in how to do physics better.”

Martinis received the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics alongside John Clarke and Michel Devoret for their pioneering experiments demonstrating macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in electrical circuits. The Nobel ceremony took place on December 10 at the Stockholm Concert Hall.