‘X’, born in the UK, was conferred the Nobel Prize in 2025. He was a professor in an American university when this prize was announced. Identify ‘X’.

1. Michel T. Devoret
2. Richard Robson
3. John Clarke
4. Joel Mokyr

Explanation

Option (c) is correct

• John Clarke was born in Cambridge, UK, and was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley when he was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics. He shared the prize with Michel H. Devoret (born in France) and John M. Martinis (born in the US) for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.
• Note: Questions of this nature are often designed by UPSC to maintain unpredictability and keep the cutoff balanced. It is neither practical nor necessary for an aspirant to know every such highly specific obscure information. We recommend aspirants avoid unnecessary guesswork in such highly factual questions.

Answer: (c) John Clarke; Difficulty Level: Hard