The pioneering justice graduated from Stanford Law School in 1952 in the top 10% of her class but famously struggled to find employment because so few firms would hire women at the time. “It’s good to be first,” she would later say, of her responsibility as a trailblazer. “But you don’t want to be last.”
A believer in the power of design to change the world, McKim’s philosophy of “visual thinking” and his unique creative methods echo in Stanford’s design program today.
Awarded the National Medal of Science, Roger Shepard, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford, introduced techniques for quantifying mental processes.
Known for his theoretical and experimental research into the physics of materials solidification, Tiller investigated the relationships between the crystallization process and the resulting material structures and their physical properties.
The Stanford immunologist’s research on how our immune cells recognize pathogens – and what happens when this process goes wrong – paved the way to modern immunology.
Rohlen’s career spanned the intersection of research, teaching, and policy, and he was a foundational figure in the formation of multiple programs and research centers at Stanford.
Aydin was a field geologist who loved nothing more than leading teams of researchers and students into remote locations – the Valley of Fire, Point Reyes, Zion National Park, a Hawaiian volcano, Sicily – to study prehistoric rock formations.
Baylor, former chair of the Department of Neurobiology, gained international recognition for discovering the electrical language used by the retina to translate light from the outside world into signals that the brain reads.