The 2025 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry, announced on Tuesday (7) and Wednesday (8), included contributions from a professor and a scientist alumnus of Unicamp. For the Physics prize, scientists John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis used the theoretical model named after Amir Caldeira, a senior professor at the Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics (IFGW) at Unicamp, whose doctorate was defended in 1980. For the Chemistry prize, scientists Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi won. The latter had among his team members Ricardo Barroso Ferreira, who was an undergraduate and master's student at the Institute of Chemistry (IQ) and currently lives in the United States.
Caldeira, a professor in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics, said the citation was a "pleasant surprise." "What the award-winning scientists did was experimentally confirm the theory of my doctoral thesis, defended in October 1980," he says. "I know their work; I never imagined I would win the Nobel Prize. They brilliantly confirmed what we did back then. I never imagined my thesis would have such a profound impact, even today."
The Nobel Prize in Physics, on quantum mechanics, paves the way for a new generation of computers. "The technology, which allows us to manage increasingly smaller systems, has been developing for a long time. Now, the practical application of quantum computing still needs to be studied and have a development policy. I'm against immediacy; the application is far from our imagination," Caldeira continues.
The award winners demonstrated the validity of the principles of quantum theory in mesoscopic systems, through the so-called “Caldeira-Leggett model”, which go beyond the atomic and subatomic levels, as was already known, but also on larger scales, even if not visible to the naked eye.
In the 1970s, Caldeira and his advisor Anthony Leggett—a theoretical physicist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who won the Nobel Prize in 2003 for identifying the superfluid phases of He3 and also gave the model its name—made significant advances in quantum physics research. The Caldeira-Leggett model is one of the first and fundamental models for understanding how quantum systems interact with their environment. It is worth noting that the Unicamp professor was coordinator of the National Institute of Quantum Science and Information Technology (INCT-IQ) from 2009 to 2014.
New rules
The field of Chemistry, in turn, awarded a paper that, according to the Nobel Committee, "creates new rules for chemistry" based on studies of so-called metal-organic structures. The work of the three scientists could be used to tackle some of our planet's biggest problems, including capturing carbon dioxide—which could help combat climate change—or reducing plastic pollution.
"They've found ways to create entirely new materials with large internal cavities that can be thought of almost like hotel rooms, so that 'guest' molecules can move in and out of the same material," Heiner Linke, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said at the press conference. "A small amount of this material could be almost like Hermione's handbag in Harry Potter. It could store enormous amounts of gas in a tiny volume."
For André Luiz Barboza Formiga, associate professor at IQ, "this award has been anticipated for some time." The professor of Coordination Chemistry and Computational Coordination Chemistry was an undergraduate professor and master's advisor to Ricardo Barroso Ferreira, who was part of the research team of Omar M. Yaghi, one of the award winners. "Ricardo received a FAPESP scholarship for scientific initiation and completed an internship in California. After completing his master's degree at Unicamp, in the same field as this award-winning study, he returned and stayed."
Ferreira, while still an undergraduate, achieved a rare feat for an undergraduate student: he co-authored an article in the journal ScienceIn early 2009, as a research fellow, he joined Yaghi's research team at the University of California's Nanosystems Institute. The group developed a crystal capable of capturing carbon dioxide emissions. "We synthesized several different materials. I was in charge of the synthesis and analysis of some of them," he said at the time.
Today, Ferreira says he celebrated the award. "Professor Yaghi was a great encourager for me to pursue my doctorate abroad; we co-authored articles, and he gave me a letter of introduction. During my doctorate, I worked in the same field as his research. It's interesting how a public university like Unicamp prepares us for so many things, opens so many doors. When I did my internship, Yaghi was already famous, and he once visited the university and made a point of meeting me again," he says. "The award is well-deserved and highly anticipated. Yaghi has always shown his commitment to inspiring the new generation of chemists."
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Ricardo, 21, publishes in Science
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