Biography

Charles Marcus was raised in Sonoma, California, USA, and was an undergraduate at Stanford University (1980-84). He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard in 1990 and was an IBM postdoctoral fellow at Harvard from 1990-92. He then served on the Physics faculty at Stanford (1992-2000) and Harvard (2000-2011) where he also was Director of the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems (2006-2011). Marcus joined the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI), University of Copenhagen, in Denmark in 2012 as Villum Kann Rasmussen Professor, sponsored by the Villum Foundation, serving as Director of the Center for Quantum Devices, a Center of Excellence sponsored by the Danish National Research Foundation. From 2016-21 he was also Scientific Director of Microsoft Quantum Lab–Copenhagen.

Marcus joined University of Washington in 2023 as the Boeing Johnson Endowed Chair in Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Physics.

He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Danish Royal Academy of Science and Letters. In 1999 he was awarded the Industry Prize by the Danish Academy of Natural Sciences, and in 2020 was the first non-Dane to receive the H.C. Ørsted Gold Medal, awarded only 20 times since 1909 including to Niels Bohr in 1924.

Education

• Physics, Harvard University
• Physics, Harvard University
• Physics, Stanford University

Previous appointments

• 2016–2021 Partner Research Manager and Site Director, Microsoft Quantum
• 2012–current Villum Kann Rasmussen Professor, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen
• 2000–2012 Professor, Department of Physics, Harvard University
• 1999–2000 Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Stanford University
• 1992–1999 Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Stanford University

Research Statement

Marcus’s research interests focus on experimental condensed matter physics, quantum coherent electronics, quantum matter, spin and superconducting qubits, quantum chaos, complexity, and topology in condensed matter. 

Honors & awards

• H.C. Ørsted Gold Medal in Physics, 2020
• Industry Prize, Danish Academy of Natural Sciences, 2019
• Research Excellence in Nanotechnology Award, University of Pennsylvania, 2014
• AAAS Newcomb-Cleveland Prize, 2006
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2013
• Foreign member, Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters, 2012
• Fellow, American Physical Society, 2009
• U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2018
• Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters, 2012