John Arnot Wilson ’38

John, founder of a law firm with an extensive practice in California's high-tech Silicon Valley, died at his home in Portola Valley on Dec. 15, 1999.

He graduated from Princeton with honors in history, earned his law degree at Yale in 1941, and was first attracted to California as a Navy lt. serving as a flight instructor at Moffatt Field. Post-war, after several years as an attorney for the US Atomic Energy Commission, he returned to California, and in 1961, the present-day firm of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati was formed. As John noted in Fifty Years Later, the firm has participated in the emergence of the semiconductor, computer, biotech, and other high-tech businesses of the area.

John served as councilman and then mayor of Portola, on the boards of the Woodside fire district and the Santa Clara County Community Foundation, and as a director of Northern California Presbyterian Homes. He was active in the Stanford Center for Intl. Security and Arms Control (one of whose leading lights is our Wolfgang Panofsky).

John is survived by his wife, Nancy, to whom he proposed in 1957 on an oak-covered knoll where they built a home and raised their three children: Catherine, John, and Robert. He also leaves six grandchildren, a sister, Mary, and a brother, David. The class extends its deepest sympathy.

The Class of 1938