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JM
John M. Martinis

Physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 2025

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
I've had some downturns in my career and various problems, but in fact all those kind of problems turned into something even better. It's kind of amazing, various times in my career.

Adam Smith, Nobel Week in Stockholm, Nobel Prize Outreach, 6 December 2025 source ↗

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Geoffrey Hinton Computer scientist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 2024
I would like to have been concerned about this existential threat sooner.
Recorded Adam Smith, Nobel Week in Stockholm, Nobel Prize Outreach, 6 December 2024 source ↗
Tadao Ando Architect; Pritzker Prize laureate, 1995
I would like my architecture to inspire people to use their own resources, to move into the future.
Recorded Anonymous, Online Quote Compilation, FavQs, 10 July 2026 source ↗
Yaa Gyasi Novelist
Homegoing spans about 250 years of Ghanaian and American history. Some of this history I knew a bit about, but the novel did require an extensive amount of research, which was by far the most difficult part in the process of writing.
Recorded Wayne Catan, The Hemingway Society, 1 June 2017 source ↗
Andrew Young Civil rights leader, US Ambassador to the United Nations, Mayor of Atlanta
I knew what I had done wrong. I had followed the experts and put the money I had in television. The second time around I spent almost no money on television. The only money I spent on television, I spent on Ted Turner's station, late at night on something called Creature Feature and wrestling. Because those were things that I knew people looked at. But we spent most of our money organizing people door-to-door.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 28 June 1996 source ↗

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Question What is the biggest professional obstacle you have faced? Craft & work
I would say there are many challenges, and that's kind of what's hard about it. And my particular thesis, since leaving Google and doing my own company, is that building a quantum computer is a little bit harder than the scientists think about because of the system engineering. Building a powerful computer is hard. So what we're particularly working on is the manufacturing of qubits and doing that much better than what people are doing right now. I really enjoyed being in academia, and even at Google working on that. But I really enjoy right now trying to think very practically about what we have to do to get this to work. And what kind of people we have to collaborate with in order to put all the pieces together and build a quantum computer in a cost effective, economic way that makes business sense.
Recorded Adam Smith, Telephone interview recorded shortly after the prize announcement, October 2025, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 October 2025 source ↗

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