Stanley Wojcicki

Stanley George Wojcicki ( ; born Stanisław Jerzy Wójcicki, ; March 30, 1937 – May 31, 2023) was an American physicist and former chair of the physics department at Stanford University in California.

Early life and education Wojcicki was born in Warsaw, Poland, the son of Janina Wanda Wójcicka (née Kozłowska), a bibliographer, and Franciszek Wójcicki, a lawyer. He and his brother fled from Poland to Sweden with his mother at the age of 12, when communists came to power. They eventually arrived in the United States. His father remained in Poland, and was soon imprisoned for five years for being a member of the government's main opposition party. He was never able to gain a visa to come to the United States.

Career Wojcicki worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and was a National Science Foundation fellow at CERN and the Collège de France. In 1966, he joined the Stanford University physics faculty where he headed the Department of Physics from 1982–1985 and 2004–2007.

Personal life Stanley Wojcicki was the husband of fellow educator Esther Wojcicki, whom he met at UC Berkeley, and married in 1962. They had three children and ten grandchildren. Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of YouTube. Google's first office was started in her home. Janet Wojcicki, assistant professor of pediatrics at UCSF.

Wojcicki died at his residence in Los Altos, California, on May 31, 2023, at the age of 86.