ELIZABETH HOLMES: The Most Notorious Stanford Student?

Here is a table showing those schools most successful in business.  A unicorn founder is someone who formed a startup company that reached a valuation of $1 billion.

Business Insider wrote about the 26 most famous and successful Stanford University students of all time.  Included were people like:  John F. Kennedy, Mitt Romney, Steve Ballmer (Microsoft guy), Shri Mukesh Ambani (runs the largest company in India), Larry Page (cofounded Google), Sergey Brin (co-founded Google), Reese Witherspoon and Tiger Woods.  I mention these particular individuals because they all left Stanford without a degree.  Some remain on leave, perhaps to return someday to finish what they started.  Clearly, all have done well. 

Of course, there is me.  I started and earned a B.S. degree in chemical engineering, from Stanford, graduating in 1962.  I think I have been successful, but certainly not famous.  However, I'm now 86 and live a fabulous retired life at 15 Craigside in Honolulu.  Mind you, Albert Einstein would not think much of me.

Then there is Elizabeth Holmes, who was a freshman in the Stanford Chemical Engineering Department from 2002-2003 and qualifies as a unicorn founder, for her Theranos reached a value of around $10 billion in the 2014-2015 period.  However, her fame is notorious, for her company dropped to a net worth of zero in 2016 and dissolved in 2018.  She is also now serving a 10-year and 3-month federal prison sentence in the Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, with a scheduled release date of 22February2030.

I have been keeping track of Elizabeth Holmes now for 12 years, the year after she founded Theranos.  I read somewhere that she had dropped out of the chemical engineering program to found the company, with a name or two I recognized from the ChE department.  Her public profile peaked in 2015 when she landed on Time Magazine's list of the 100 influential people, before The Wall Street Journal published the landmark exposé questioning the validity of her technology later in the year.  Note the author, John Carreyrou.  He becomes prominent in some of those mentioned documentaries.

Who is Elizabeth Holmes?

• Born in 1984 in Washington, D.C..
• Her father was a vice president of a subsidiary of Enron, while her mother was a Congressional committee staffer.
• One of her ancestors founded Fleischmann's yeast.
• Family in financial trouble when Enron went bankrupt in 2001.
• 
  However, family must have had resources, for Elizabeth began studying at Stanford in 2002, and was not on scholarship.  
• One of the film productions mentioned she was a presidential scholar, meaning that she was in the top 10% of the entering class.
• I can identify with that, for I must have been in the bottom 10% when you include, family wealth, sociological experience and general status of life.
• So anyway she attended Stanford University's summer Mandarin program.

• 
  Liz met Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, a Pakistani-born technology entrepreneur in 2002 during a Beijing trip.  
• She was 18 and he 37.  
• He had already divorced his wife when they met, and said he had sold a company and was worth $40 million.
• They began to live together in 2005, and he joined Theranos in 2009 as COO.
• He left the company in 2016.
• 
  She had a fear of needles, and saw how much blood was being taken for each test, and thought that there should be a way to do all the tests with one drop of blood.  
• I can appreciate that, too, for I need to let three vials taken out of me every six months a week before my 6-month physical with my doctor.  Hate it, and, if I were to invent something similar, would make the test uninvasive.  Even one drop means your finger has to be pricked.

• 
  It takes 100 to 300 drops of blood to fill a vial, depending on the size.
• It takes a whole laboratory of people and scads of devices to test your blood.  She wanted a small box like this.
• 
  Founded Real-Time Cures in Palo Alto, California in 2003 to "democratize healthcare."
• Used her tuition money to start the company, dropping out of Stanford.
• Professors at Stanford told her what she was trying to do was impossible.
• But she convinced Channing Robertson (former chairman of the ChE dept. and now dean of the School of Engineering) to back her idea.

• 
  Re-named company Theranos (combination of words "therapy" and "diagnosis").
• Robertson became the first board member, and he introduced Holmes to venture capitalists.
• By the end of 2004, raised $6 million.
• By 2010 had $92 million in venture capital.
• 
  In 2011 got former secretary of state George Shultz to join, and added Henry Kissinger, General James Mattis, William Perry (former Secretary of Defense), Sam Nunn (former Senator), Riley Bechtel (chairmann of Bechtel Group), David Boies (high profile lawyer, who also served as company counsel) and others.
• 
  Somewhere along the way she began to believe Silicon Valley jargon that you had to fake it 'til you make it.  Holmes operated Theranos in a stealth mode until 2013, when she announced a partnership with Walgreens.  This got on her on the covers of Fortune, Forbes, etc.
• Forbes recognized her as the world's youngest self-made female billionaire and her #110 on their top 400 in 2014.
• By the end of 2014, her name appeared on 18 U.S.  and 66 foreign patents.
• 
  Then came John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal.
• Theranos did everything to stop him from publishing.
• In October 2015, the Journal published the bombshell article.
• Journal continued to publish for the next few years, and in 2018, Carreyrou published Bad Blood:  Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.

Tomorrow, Part 2 to the story of Elizabeth Holmes.  

• I haven't said anything about her new family of a partner and two small children.
• I've just this week seen numerous films and documentaries about her.  I will review what is out there for your watching.

Remember the strongest oceanic storm the world has seen this year, Super Typhoon Champi?

Well, pretty much followed the predicted model and is today a tropical storm over Kyushu, Japan.  However, no one saw this coming.

Thankfully, still pretty much missed Taiwan and the islands of Okinawa.  Of course damage was still significant in Guam, Taiwan and some of those islands.  Well, a new typhoon formed to pretty much follow the path of Champi.

In-Fa just became a typhoon today, but will strengthen into a Category 2 tomorrow, then Category 3 the next day, and will be at least a Category 4 from October 29, heading straight for Taiwan and Okinawa, again.

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THE STANFORD PRISON and MARSHMALLOW EXPERIMENTS

To begin, Stanford has had the #1 Psychology Department in the country for a very long time:  Both from Google AI:

The top five psychology departments in the 1970 report were: [1]

Stanford University
University of Michigan
University of California, Berkeley
Harvard University
University of Illinois [1]

Stanford University's psychology department ranked #1 in multiple major national and global evaluations for 2026:

• Times Higher Education (THE) Subject Rankings 2026: Ranked #1 in the U.S. (and #2 globally) for psychology.
U.S. News & World Report: Ranked #1 (tie) for graduate/overall psychology programs with a peer assessment score of 4.7.
QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026: Ranked #3 globally for psychology. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Between 1970 and 1972 Stanford conducted two controversial experiments:

• In the 1971 prison experiment, Google AI said:

The Stanford Prison Experiment Conclusion is that ordinary people can quickly conform to brutal, deindividualized social roles when placed in a powerful institutional situation. [1, 2]

• The marshmallow experiment occurred in 1970, and again in 1972:

The original conclusion of the Stanford marshmallow experiment—conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in the late 1960s and 1970s—was that the ability to delay gratification is a powerful indicator of future success. [1, 2, 3]

Many consider the Stanford (or Zimbardo) Prison Experiment to be disturbing.  You can watch that video.  There was also a full-length film, with Billy Crudup (left) as Dr. Philip Zimbardo.  Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 84/75.  From Wikipedia:

• 
  In 1971, Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo (that's him to the right in 1971) managed a research team, designed to be a 2-week simulation of a prison environment.  Funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

• 
  To quote Zimbardo (that's him in 2015):  We wanted to see what the psychological effects were of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. To do this, we decided to set up a simulated prison and then carefully note the effects of this institution on the behavior of all those within its walls.^[7]
• Male college students were recruited, and were to be paid $15/day for 1-2 weeks.  Doesn't soundlike much, but this amount is today the equivalent of $120/day.
• Experiment was conducted in Jordan Hall, Stanford's psychology building occupied by graduate students.
• Zimbardo took on the role of prison superintendent.
• Palo Alto police were actually used to mock arrest individuals for armed robbery and burglary, including using the police department for fingerprinting, mug shots, etc.
• Prisoners were given numbers, for the whole point was to dehumanize them.
• One student actually suffered a mental breakdown on Day 2 and was released.  Later said he faked this to study for his Graduate Record Exam.
• A second did break down and was released.
• 
  Guards were encouraged to talk "tough" and maintain law and order, but not to inflict any harm.
• On day 5, one of Zimbardo's colleagues visited the prison, and she expressed her concern about conditions. 
• There were other cautions, so Zimbardo ended the experiment on Day 6, more than a week earlier than expected.
• There followed several debriefing sessions.
• The BBC in 2001 conducted a similar study, which was made into a documentary series called The Experiment.

• 
  When acts of prisoner torture and abuse by US military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were publicized in March 2004, Zimbardo was struck by the similarity with his own experiment. He was dismayed by official military and government representatives shifting the blame for the torture and abuse onto "a few bad apples", rather than acknowledging systemic problems.^[40] Zimbardo was then quoted saying "I argue that we all have the capacity for love and evil—to be Mother Theresa, to be Hitler or Saddam Hussein. It's the situation that brings that out".^[40]
• A 2007 study on prison-life examined the potential relationship between participant self-selection and the disposition toward aggressive behaviors. They found that when responding to an advertisement, participants "were significantly higher on measures of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance than those who responded to a parallel ad that omitted the words 'of prison life,' and they were significantly lower in dispositional empathy and altruism".^[61]
• Zimbardo passed away in 2024, but National Geographic, just a month after, released a 3-part documentary titled The Stanford Prison Experiment:  Unlocking the Truth.

• 
  Finally:  The Stanford Prison Experiment lasted less than a week in 1971, but its claims about human nature endured for decades. Now, a new Netflix series is bringing one of psychology’s most controversial studies, and some of the biggest concerns surrounding it, back into the spotlight.  The New Stanford Prison Experiment was just released this week.  There are 6 episodes.  But Rotten Tomatoes reviewers only gave it at 33 rating. This is an unscripted reality competition series.

Another Stanford psychologist, Walter Mischel, ran  the Stanford Marshmallow Test, suggesting that self-discipline at an early age (4-5) can lead to later success.  I later found a review entitled 40 Years of Stanford Research Found That People With This One quality Are More Likely to Succeed.  I've found that this Power of Delayed Gratification worked for me.  To quote:

The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a a range of other life measures.

Does this mean that a child who can't delay gratification will ultimately fail in life?  Well, maybe not.  A 2020 study challenged the original contention.  Yet, that paper came from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, and is linked to a philosophy that is steeped in conservative religion.  Science has been critical of much that the Templeton Prize offers.  But what has religion to do with psychology and success or not?  Philosophers have long wrestled with that question.

That experiment occurred more than half a century ago.  You can read the details in Wikipedia.  I include a few summaries.

• A replication attempt with a sample from a more diverse population that was over 10 times larger than the original study showed only half the effect of the original study. The replication suggested that economic background, rather than willpower, explained the other half.^[6][7] The predictive power of the marshmallow test was challenged in a 2020 study.^[8][9]Work done in 2018 and 2024 found that the marshmallow test "does not reliably predict adult functioning".^[10]

• 
  From Google AI:

The scientific consensus today is that the original conclusion of the Stanford marshmallow study—that a child's innate willpower or self-control is a powerful, lifelong predictor of future success—was largely overstated and misunderstood. [1, 2]

So as successful as Stanford University has been, there have been failures.  Maybe the ultimate boo boo was perpetrated by Elizabeth Holmes.  She began studying in the Stanford chemical engineering department 44 years after me. I thus have a special interest in her, for all those years later, I recognize some names from that school. I began my life at Stanford in 1958, 68 years ago.  Tomorrow the story of Elizabeth Holmes.

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THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY CLASS OF 1962

This will be the first of a 3-part series on Stanford University.

• Part 1:  the title above.  We have a facebook page.
• Part 2:  The Stanford Prison Experiment and Marshmallow Study.

• 
  Part 3:  Elizabeth Holmes, maybe the most infamous Stanford student.  Currently playing in movie theaters is a documentary about her, You Can See Everything.  Rotten Tomatoes scores of 98/97!!!  I might just go and see it today, which would be the first time for me to actually go to a theater since Barbenheimer weekend.

Why Stanford class of 1962?  That was the year I graduated, after 3.75 years there.  I have had numerous postings about Stanford University.  Here are a few.

• 7February2013:  HOW TO GO TO STANFORD FOR ALMOST FREE
• 15March2014:  STANFORD HITS THE SWEET SPOT
• 9December2015:  THE STORY OF STANFORD WINES
• 15June2016:  CAN STANFORD SAVE PLANET EARTH AND HUMANITY?
• 20January2017:  WHICH IS THE HARDEST UNIVERSITY TO BE ACCEPTED?
• 13November2018:  HOW I NOW THINK I REALLY GOT INTO STANFORD
• 8June2024:  LIFE ON THE STANFORD CAMPUS
• 13March2026:  HOW DID STANFORD GET TO BE SO OUTSTANDING?

I asked Google AI, who are the most famous Stanford University graduates.  Too many to list here, but here are some:  Ted Danson (actor), Sigourney Weaver (actor), Sally Ride (astronaut), Tiger Woods (golfer), Katie Ledecky (swimming), John McEnroe (tennis), Bob Mathias (track and field), Sergey Brin/Larry Page (Google), Phil Knight (Nike), Jensen Huang (NVIDIA), Robert Mondavi (wines), Charles Schwab (finance), Herbert Hoover (POTUS), Sandra Day O'Conner (Supreme Court), Rachel Maddow (broadcaster),  Eunice Kennedy Schriver (special olympics), John Steinbeck (author)  and a bunch of Nobel Prize Winners.

 

I graduated from Stanford University in 1962.  Wow, that was 64 years ago.  I asked Google AI, who were the most famous class of 1962 graduates.  Only two people were mentioned:  Ted Koppel and Phil Knight.  Yes, they are pretty famous, but they each got a masters' degree.  There were no really famous undergraduate students in our class of 1962.  No one, apparently, became a billionaire or U.S. Senator or great golfer or anything.

What spurred me to write this particular posting is an article I read in the recent Fall edition of the alumni magazine.

NERD NATION is a quarter-million strong.

• That’s right. For the first time in history,

  there are more than 250,000 living Stanford

  alumni. There were, in fact, 251,748 in July.

  Our number inevitably dwindles a bit before

  growing at the end of each quarter, but that’s

  the count we’ve used to paint a portrait of the

  alumni body.

• 
  Steve Miller (right) became the 250,000th LIVING alum.  Somebody actually keeps track of these people.
• I found it particularly interesting that the international city where most Stanford graduates lives is Singapore, with 1,251, or 201 alum per million population.
• #2 Tokyo 1082  (29 a/mp) and #3 London 1067 (117 a/mp).
• While 50.2% of those who have read this blog comes from the U.S., an astounding 14.6% come from #2 Singapore, and #3 is the United Kingdom.
• Singapore:  2.35%/million population
• USA: 0.14%/million population.
• UK: 0.06%/million population.

• 
  Some other bits of info.
• 1 in 9,234 became an astronaut.  Sally Ride earned four degrees from Stanford:  BS, BA, MS and PhD), and was the first American woman in space.
• 1 in 19,365 won a Nobel prize.
• 1 in 252,748 became president of the U.S.

• 
  Most popular majors.  Top three.
• 1891-1945:  economics, history and english.
• 1946-1980:  history, economics and political.
• 1981-2000:  economics, biological sciences, and human biology
• 2001-2026:  computer science, human biology and economics.

• 
  Stanford was coeducational when it opened in 1891, although with a cap of 500 females.
• This cap was increased to 40% in 1933, and eliminated in 1973.  Today, 52% are female.
• Harvard was founded in 1636, and only admitted men until their merger with Radcliffe in 1977.  Today, no Radcliffe College, and Harvard has 53% female.

• 
  Stanford University's School of Engineering consistently ranks #2 in the nation behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) across major publications like U.S. News & World Report Best Engineering Schools and the QS World University Rankings for Engineering and Technology. [1, 2, 3]
• My major, chemical engineering, only graduates perhaps 11-15/year with a B.S.  
• The department is now rated #3 in the country, but it was last #1 in 2016, a decade ago.
• In Part 3, Elizabeth Holmes' major was in chemical engineering.

Stanford was terrible in athletics when I was there.  Today, doing fine.

• The first university to win the Director's Cup for top NCAA team in all athletic events was North Carolina in 1993-4, with Stanford #2.
• For the next 25 straight years, Stanford was #1.
• Texas broke that streak in 2020-21, and repeated in 2022.  The COVID pandemic changed university priorities.
• But Stanford regained the Cup in 2023.
• Texas prevailed in 2024 and 2025.  Stanford was #2 in 2025/26.

Here is what Stanford students look like on graduation day.  

The Stanford Tree (which has never been blessed by the university as official) is featured.

About this controversy, Stanford once had mascot, an Indian, for in my days there, sport teams were called the Stanford Indians.  However, like the Cleveland  and Washington pro teams, change came.  Early for Stanford, in 1972, as the mascot, said to be Prince Lightfoot of the Yorok tribe, was abolished by the Associated Students of Stanford University.   In 1975, the student body picked Robber Barons as a replacement, in honor of founder, railroad tycoon Leland Stanford.  The school Board did not particularly like that either, for the allusion was all too clear.  Says Google AI:

Leland Stanford perfectly embodied the 19th-century "robber baron" archetype. As a railroad tycoon, governor, and senator, he built a massive fortune through aggressive monopolies, political manipulation, and taxpayer exploitation. Yet, his legacy is deeply paradoxical, culminating in the founding of Stanford University. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The Stanford Tree is a sequoia, and redesigned each year, with a new student inside.  Currently, Sonnet Loki Van Doren.

She comes from a high school class of six.  Here is Van Doren as the current Stanford Tree.

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