# List of people from Palo Alto

This is a list of notable people from Palo Alto, California. It includes people who were born/raised in, lived in, or spent portions of their lives in Palo Alto, or for whom Palo Alto is a significant part of their identity.

## Actors

* Zach Appelman, actor known for the television series Sleepy Hollow, born and raised in Palo Alto and is a Palo Alto High alumnus
* Aarón Díaz, Mexican American actor, singer, and model; born in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, raised in Palo Alto
* Polly Draper, actress, screenplay writer, producer, and director; was in the television program Thirtysomething; raised in Palo Alto
* Dave Franco, actor, born in Palo Alto
* James Franco, actor, director, screenwriter, producer, artist, and author, born in Palo Alto
* Neva Gerber, silent screen actress, moved to Palo Alto after she married San Francisco oil geologist Edward F. Nolan
* Charles Haid, actor and director known for Hill Street Blues, graduated from Palo Alto High in 1961
* Teri Hatcher, actress known for Desperate Housewives and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, born in Palo Alto
* Amy Irving, actress known for Crossing Delancey and Yentl, born in Palo Alto
* Željko Ivanek, actor known for 24, Damages, and Madam Secretary, Ellwood P. Cubberley High School alumnus
* Ellen K, radio personality and television host, born in Palo Alto
* Brandis Kemp, actress known for television series Fridays
* Kaja Martin, actress and film producer, involved in Riley Rewind, born and raised in Palo Alto
* Shemar Moore, actor and model, Gunn High School alumnus
* Rick Rossovich, actor known for Top Gun, Roxanne, and The Terminator
* Alessandra Torresani, actress known for Caprica, born and raised in Palo Alto
* Bree Turner, actress known for the television series Grimm, born in Palo Alto
* Sheila Vand, actress known for her role in Argo, raised in Palo Alto

## Visual arts
### Fine artists

* Jeremy Anderson, wood sculptor and professor, graduated from Palo Alto High School
* Greg Brown, trompe-l'oeil muralist, grew up in Palo Alto and graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1969
* Margo Davis, photographer, lived in Palo Alto for over 30 years
* Terry Acebo Davis, fine artist and chairperson of the Palo Alto Public Art Commission
* Pedro Joseph de Lemos, painter, printmaker, architect, illustrator, writer, lecturer, and museum director, lived and died in Palo Alto
* Edward McNeil Farmer, watercolorist, oil painter, and professor at Stanford University, lived in Palo Alto and was active in the Pacific Art League (previously known as Palo Alto Art Club)
* Donald Farnsworth, fine art master printmaker, born in Palo Alto
* Helen Katharine Forbes, muralist and painter, grew up in Palo Alto
* Tom Franco, artist and actor, grew up in Palo Alto and attended Palo Alto High School, graduating in 1998
* James Gurney, illustrator, artist, and creator of the Dinotopia world, grew up in Palo Alto
* Ollie Johnston, Academy Award–winning Disney animator, known for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fantasia
* Nina Katchadourian, artist, attended Gunn High School
* Paula Kirkeby (1934–2016), art collector, art donor, and the director and founder of the commercial art gallery, Smith Andersen Gallery, and printshops, Smith Andersen Editions and 3EP Ltd. Press
* Bertha Elizabeth Stringer Lee (1869–1937), California impressionist painter, died in Palo Alto
* Elizabeth Norton (1887–1985), bronze sculptor, printmaker, painter, and one of the founders of the Palo Alto Art Club (now known as the Pacific Art League)
* Nathan Oliveira, painter and educator within the Bay Area Figurative Movement, maintained his art studio in Palo Alto
* Yvonne Rainer, modern dancer and filmmaker
* John Aloysius Stanton (1857–1929), painter, academic administrator, and professor
* Cloyd Jonathan Sweigert, political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle, California Impressionist painter, and member of the Pacific Art League (previously known as Palo Alto Art Club)
* Jimmy Swinnerton, cartoonist and fine art painter, maintained a house in Palo Alto for many years
* Jacqueline Thurston, visual artist and writer, has lived in Palo Alto for many years
* Shirley Williamson (1875–1944), California Impressionist painter, monotype printer, and member of the Pacific Art League (previously known as Palo Alto Art Club), lived in Palo Alto for many years

### Designers

* Arthur Bridgman Clark (1866–1949), architect, professor, first mayor of Mayfield, and first head of the Art Department at Stanford University
* Birge Clark (1893–1989), architect, worked largely in the Spanish Colonial Revival style around Palo Alto
* Lisa Hanawalt (born 1983), illustrator, cartoonist, production designer and producer; executive produced the Netflix animated series, Tuca & Bertie; born and raised in Palo Alto
* Michael Manwaring (born 1942), designer, artist, and one of the founders of the San Francisco Bay Area postmodern movement in graphic design; born and raised in Palo Alto
* Michael H. Riley, Emmy Award-nominated motion graphics designer and art director, grew up in Palo Alto
* Sigrid Lorenzen Rupp, architect and artist, specialized in designing facilities for tech companies in Silicon Valley

## Business leaders and entrepreneurs

* Sergey Brin (born 1973), co-founder of Google
* Thomas Foon Chew, founder of Bayside Canning Company in 1918
* Tim Cook (born 1960), CEO of Apple Inc. since 2011
* Debbi Fields (born 1956), founder of Mrs. Fields Bakeries
* David Filo (born 1966), co-founder of Yahoo! Inc.
* Jack Herrick, founder of wikiHow
* William Hewlett (1913–2001), co-founder of technology company Hewlett-Packard; buried at Alta Mesa Cemetery in Palo Alto
* Reid Hoffman, co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn
* Mark Hurd (1957–2019), former joint CEO of Oracle Corporation; past chairman, chief executive officer, and President of Hewlett-Packard
* Steve Jobs (1955–2011), co-founder of Apple Inc., lived in Palo Alto (1980–2011); buried at Alta Mesa Cemetery in Palo Alto
* Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube
* Darren Kimura, founder of Sopogy and inventor of MicroCSP solar technolog
* William R. Larson, founder of Round Table Pizza
* Marissa Mayer, CEO and president of Yahoo!; former vice president of search products and user experience at Google
* Chip Morningstar, software developer; project leader for Lucasfilm's Habitat, the first large-scale virtual multiuser environment; current resident
* Stephen Neal, chairman of Cooley LLP; current resident
* David Packard (1912–1996), co-founder of technology company Hewlett-Packard; buried at Alta Mesa Cemetery in Palo Alto
* Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google; current resident
* Vishal Sikka, ex-CEO of Infosys, ex-CTO of SAP AG
* Owen Van Natta, COO of Facebook, CEO of Myspace, COO of Zynga
* Romesh Wadhwani, founder and chairman of Symphony Technology Group
* Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of 23andMe
* Jerry Yang, co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc.
* Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook

## Musicians

* William Ackerman, acoustic guitarist, founded influential New Age record label Windham Hill Records
* Joan Baez, folk singer, went to school in Palo Alto, now resides in Woodside, California
* Lindsey Buckingham, musician, singer, songwriter, and producer, best known as lead guitarist and one of the vocalists of the musical group Fleetwood Mac, born and raised in Palo Alto
* Doug Clifford, drummer of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Palo Alto native
* The Donnas, rock group, met while growing up in Palo Alto; graduated from Palo Alto High in 1997
* The Grateful Dead, rock "jam" band; early incarnations of the band were based in Palo Alto
** Jerry Garcia (1942–1995), founding member of the Grateful Dead; moved to Palo Alto in the 1960s
** Bill Kreutzmann (born 1946), founding member and drummer of the Grateful Dead; born and raised in Palo Alto
** Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (1945–1973), founding member of the Grateful Dead; moved to Palo Alto as a teenager; buried at Alta Mesa Memorial Park
* Stephan Jenkins, rock musician with Third Eye Blind and Gunn High School alumnus (1983)
* The Kingston Trio, folk group, formed in Palo Alto while its members were enrolled at Stanford University and nearby Menlo College
* Rick Nowels, pop music record producer and songwriter
* Virginia Seay, composer and musicologist, born in Palo Alto in 1922
* Matt Simons, singer-songwriter, born and raised in Palo Alto; graduated from Gunn High School in 2005
* Grace Slick, singer with the rock group Jefferson Airplane, later known as Jefferson Starship
* Molly Tuttle, singer-songwriter, banjo player, guitarist, recording artist, and teacher in the bluegrass tradition, raised in Palo Alto and attended Palo Alto High School
* Ugly Kid Joe, rock band; members Whitfield Crane and Klaus Eichstadt grew up in Palo Alto, as did producer Eric Valentine
* Remi Wolf, indie pop singer-songwriter, born and raised in Palo Alto; graduated from Palo Alto High School in 2014

## Politicians, political figures and civil servants

* Robert Bell, Virginia State Delegate, born in Palo Alto
* Ron Christie, former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and political pundit
* Jerry Daniels, CIA officer in Laos during the Vietnam War
* Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the United States; starting in 1916, maintained a home in Palo Alto
* Jon Huntsman, Jr., former governor of Utah and U.S. Ambassador to China
* Merrill Newman (born 1928), Palo Alto Channing House resident, former United States Army officer, and Korean War veteran, noted for his 2013 arrest in North Korea
* Guy H. Preston, US Army brigadier general
* Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State
* Thomas T. Riley, former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco
* Manabendra Nath Roy, Indian nationalist and revolutionary
* Byron Sher (born 1928), served in the California State Senate 1996–2004, the California State Assembly from 1980 and 1996, and was a professor emeritus at Stanford Law School
* Sarah Wallis (1825–1905), first president of the California Woman Suffrage Educational Association
* Ron Wyden, United States Senator

## Religion

* John Duryea, former Palo Alto Catholic priest excommunicated by the church in the 1970s and author of his autobiography
* Gerrit W. Gong, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), raised in Palo Alto
* Indradyumna Swami (formerly Brian Tibbitts), ISKCON Guru and a sannyasi for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, born and raised in Palo Alto

## Scientists

* Richard R. Ernst, Nobel laureate in chemistry, worked at Varian Associates in Palo Alto
* Gene F. Franklin, control engineer and NASA scientist
* Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist, author, and college professor; attended Cubberly High School and built an atom smasher in his parents' garage
* Brian Kobilka, Nobel laureate in chemistry, lives in Palo Alto
* Arthur Kornberg (1918–2007), Nobel prize-winning biochemist
* Pamela Melroy, astronaut and second woman to command a space shuttle mission
* Maryam Mirzakhani (1977–2017), Iranian mathematician and professor of mathematics at Stanford University
* Souvik Bose, an Indian astrophysicist, works in Lockheed Martin & NASA
* James G. Moore (born 1930), geologist, born in Palo Alto
* Ida Shepard Oldroyd, conchologist and curator (1856–1940)
* Perley Ason Ross, physicist who worked on essential problems in the behavior of X-rays
* William Shockley, Nobel laureate in physics and eugenicist
* Robert Spinrad (1932–2009), computer pioneer as director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
* Sidney Dean Townley, astronomer, geodeticist, and Stanford University professor emeritus

## Writers

* David M. Alexander, attorney and science-fiction and crime novelist
* Jordan Allen-Dutton, screenplay writer and producer of theatre, raised in Palo Alto
* Renée Ashley, poet, novelist, essayist, and educator, born in Palo Alto
* Raymond Carver, short story writer and poet
* Erle Stanley Gardner, crime novelist and creator of Perry Mason
* Ariel Gore (born 1970), journalist, memoirist, and novelist author, raised in Palo Alto
* Ken Kesey (1935–2001), novelist, short story writer, playwright, and author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which he finished writing while living in a cottage in Palo Alto
* Marty Klein (born 1950), sex therapist, author, educator, and public policy analyst
* Michael Lederer, author
* John Markoff, Pulitzer prize winner and former New York Times technology journalist; grew up in Palo Alto and has lived there for many years
* Chanel Miller (born 1992), victim of sexual assault and author of best-selling memoir Know My Name
* Azadeh Moaveni (born 1976), Iranian-American journalist and author, born in Palo Alto; author of Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran
* Julia Flynn Siler, journalist and nonfiction author
* Keith Raffel, crime novelist, tech entrepreneur, syndicated columnist, and university lecturer
* Ron Unz (born 1961), far-right writer
* Andrea U'Ren, children's book author and illustrator
* Tad Williams, New York Times best-selling author
* Yvor Winters, poet, known as the "Sage of Palo Alto"
* Al Young (1939–2021), poet, educator, novelist, and essayist, lived in Palo Alto for almost three decades
* Jessica Yu (born 1966), screenplay writer and film director, attended Gunn High School

## Athletes

* Davante Adams, NFL wide receiver for the Las Vegas Raiders, East Palo Alto resident and Palo Alto High School graduate
* Harris Barton (born 1964), All Pro NFL offensive lineman
* Matt Biondi (born 1965), swimmer and winner of 11 Olympic medals (8 gold), born in Palo Alto
* Hunter Bishop (born 1998), baseball player
* Paul Blanchette (born 1994), soccer player
* Nick Bravin (born 1971), Olympic fencer
* Jim Harbaugh, former football player and current head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers, graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1982
* Tony Hargain, NFL player
* Phil Hellmuth, professional poker player, holds a record 16 WSOP bracelets with total earnings of more than $25 million to date
* Katie Hoff, Olympic swimmer, Palo Alto native
* Adam Juratovac, professional football player and Arena Bowl XXIII champion alumnus of Gunn High School
* Dana Kirk, Olympic swimmer, coaches for Palo Alto Stanford Aquatics
* Tara Kirk, Olympic swimmer, swam with Palo Alto Stanford Aquatics; American record holder in 100 and 200-yard (180 m) breaststroke
* Hilary Knight, PHWL ice hockey player, 1-time Olympic gold medal winner, 9-time Women's World Championships winner
* Trajan Langdon, basketball executive and former player
* Francie Larrieu-Smith, long-distance runner and first female athlete to make five Olympic teams, born in Palo Alto
* Jeremy Lin (born 1988), basketball player, formerly for the NBA's Toronto Raptors, alumnus of Palo Alto High School
* Jim Loscutoff, basketball player who won seven NBA championships with the Boston Celtics
* Don MacLean, UCLA and NBA basketball player
* Bob Melvin (born 1961), Major League Baseball player and manager of the San Francisco Giants
* Joc Pederson (born 1992), baseball player for the Arizona Diamondbacks
* Dan Petry, pitcher for 1984 World Series champion Detroit Tigers, born in Palo Alto
* Tim Rossovich, professional football player
* Dave Schultz, Olympic gold medalist and World Champion in freestyle wrestling, subject of film Foxcatcher
* Mark Schultz, Olympic gold medalist and two-time World Champion in freestyle wrestling, subject of film Foxcatcher
* Pop Warner, early football player and head coach of eight colleges including Stanford University (1924–1932), lived and died in Palo Alto
* Charles Wright, professional wrestler, formerly worked for WWE as Papa Shango and The Godfather
* Steve Young, former professional football player for the San Francisco 49ers and NFL Hall of Famer
* Vincent Zhou, figure skater, attended the 2018 Winter Olympics