Varian

Before Hewlett-Packard filled Stanford Research Park, Varian got there first. Varian Associates was the first company to move into the Stanford Industrial Park in 1953. Its founders had invented a key microwave tube at Stanford in the 1930s and built a company around it. Over the next half century Varian grew into a maker of tubes, scientific instruments, chip equipment and cancer treatment machines. It split in 1999. The medical business still lists a Palo Alto address today as part of Siemens Healthineers.

This profile follows that thread from a Stanford basement to the present.

The klystron, 1937

Russell and Sigurd Varian were brothers. In the late 1930s they worked at Stanford with physicist William W. Hansen in the basement of the old physics building. According to Stanford's Ginzton Laboratory, they wanted to generate very high frequency, short wavelength signals that could be used for radar and direction finding.

They built on Hansen's earlier invention, the cavity resonator. In 1937 they demonstrated the first source of that kind of signal and named it the klystron. A klystron is a vacuum tube that uses bunches of electrons passing through resonant cavities to generate or amplify microwaves. It became a building block for radar during World War II and for many later technologies, from satellite links to particle accelerators.

The invention also tied the brothers closely to Stanford. Later generations of Stanford researchers, including Edward Ginzton and Marvin Chodorow, developed far more powerful klystrons after the war. Stanford's two-mile linear accelerator at SLAC was built around them. Our page on research labs near Palo Alto covers SLAC today.

Varian Associates, 1948

After the war the brothers wanted to build and sell klystrons and related equipment themselves. Varian Associates filed its articles of incorporation on April 20, 1948. The founders included Russell and Sigurd Varian, William Hansen and Edward Ginzton. The company started in San Carlos, on the Peninsula north of Palo Alto.

The founding team was unusual for its depth in research. Hansen and Ginzton were Stanford physicists. The company kept close ties to the university's labs. That fit the culture Frederick Terman was building at Stanford, where faculty, students and local companies worked closely together.

First tenant in the industrial park

In 1951 Stanford and the City of Palo Alto created the Stanford Industrial Park on university land along Page Mill Road. Stanford could not sell its land, so it leased parcels to technology companies. Varian moved into the park in 1953, becoming the first company to occupy a site there. Hewlett-Packard leased land a few years later. Our guide to Stanford Research Park tells the park's full story.

Varian's presence helped prove the park could work. A company with Stanford roots, Stanford-trained engineers and Stanford collaborators now sat on Stanford land a short drive from campus. That model was copied around the world.

Tubes, magnets and the Nobel connection

Varian did not stay a tube company. It moved into scientific instruments, especially nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR, which uses strong magnets and radio waves to study the structure of molecules. In 1963 Varian hired the Swiss chemist Richard R. Ernst. His work at Varian on Fourier transform NMR helped lead to the 1991 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The company also built medical linear accelerators, machines that use microwave power to aim radiation at tumors. That business would eventually outlast the rest of Varian. By the 1990s the company had three quite different businesses under one roof: medical systems, analytical instruments and equipment for chipmakers.

The 1999 split

On April 2, 1999, Varian Associates divided into three public companies:

The pattern echoes Hewlett-Packard, which spun off its instruments business as Agilent the same year. Both founding companies of the research park split up their original businesses within months of each other. Our Hewlett-Packard profile covers that side.

Why Varian matters to Palo Alto

Varian is less famous than HP, but historians of the region often treat the two companies as a pair. Both came out of Stanford engineering and physics in the 1930s. Both relied on Frederick Terman's network of students and faculty. Both chose to grow on Stanford land instead of moving away. Together they showed that a university could build an industrial district on its own doorstep.

Varian also shows how one invention can branch in unexpected directions. A tube built for radar research led to scientific magnets, to equipment for chip factories and to machines that treat cancer. Each branch became its own company in 1999. Three separate industries trace a line back to a basement lab on the Stanford campus.

That is also why the Varian name still turns up across the region. Agilent, Applied Materials and Siemens Healthineers all absorbed parts of the original company.

Siemens Healthineers

Varian Medical Systems grew into one of the world's leading makers of radiation therapy systems. On August 2, 2020, the German medical technology company Siemens Healthineers announced an agreement to buy it. The deal was completed on April 15, 2021. Some sources date the purchase to 2020, but that was only the announcement.

Varian kept its name as "Varian, a Siemens Healthineers company." It also kept its Palo Alto base. Its listing for the 2025 annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology gave the address as 3100 Hansen Way, Palo Alto, in Stanford Research Park.

Varian in Palo Alto today

Varian's Hansen Way site is a private corporate campus. There is no museum, plaque or visitor center about the company's history. The street shares its name with William Hansen, the physicist who worked with the brothers on the klystron.

For the bigger picture of how Varian, HP and Stanford created the research park model, read our Silicon Valley history. For other companies with a Palo Alto chapter, see the companies guide. If you want to see the research park in person, a Silicon Valley tour or a bike ride along Page Mill Road and Hansen Way works well.

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