List of Famous people born in California, United States of America

Chris Kinard is an American badminton player who was considered the top U.S. singles player in the 1970s, having been the U.S. # 1 ranked men's singles player for 7 of the decade's 10 years. He is married to former badminton player Utami Kinard.

Michael Richard Uram "Rich" Clifford, is a former United States Army officer and NASA astronaut. Clifford is considered a Master Army Aviator and has logged over 3,400 hours flying in a wide variety of fixed and rotary winged aircraft. Clifford retired from the U.S. Army at the rank of lieutenant colonel. He has logged over 12 hours of spacewalk time over three Space Shuttle missions. He is also one of the first people to conduct a spacewalk while docked to an orbiting space station. The spacewalk was conducted during STS-76, while docked at the Russian space station Mir.

Michael James "Mike" McCulley, , is a retired American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, metallurgical engineer, former NASA astronaut, and was the first submariner in space.

Michael S. Turner is an American theoretical cosmologist, who coined the term dark energy in 1998. He is the Bruce V. & Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, and was formerly the Assistant Director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences for the US National Science Foundation from 2003–2006. His book The Early Universe, co-written with fellow Chicago cosmologist Rocky Kolb and published in 1990, is a standard text on the subject.

Stanley Gerald Thompson (1912–1976) was an American chemist. He discovered together with Glenn T. Seaborg several of the transuranium elements. One of the elements is Californium, which he and several others made. He received Guggenheim Fellowships in 1954 and 1965.

Wick C. Haxton is an American theoretical nuclear physicist and astrophysicist.

John Lewis Hart, also credited as John Hilton, was an American film and television actor. In his early career, Hart appeared mostly in westerns. Although Hart played mostly minor roles in some fairly well known films, he was probably best known for having replaced Clayton Moore in the television series The Lone Ranger for one season (1952–53).

Kristen Ann Cloke is an American actress. She appeared in Space: Above and Beyond, and has acted in several small parts of other TV series. She is known for her role as Valerie Lewton in Final Destination and as Leigh Colvin in the slasher film Black Christmas (2006).

Virginia Louise Trimble is an American astronomer specializing in the structure and evolution of stars and galaxies, and the history of astronomy. She has published more than 600 works in Astrophysics, and dozens of other works in the history of other sciences. She received the NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing in 1986, "for informing and enlightening the astronomical community by her numerous, comprehensive, scholarly, and literate reviews, which have elucidated many complex astrophysical questions," the Klopsteg Memorial Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers in 2001, and the George Van Biesbroeck Prize in 2010, for "many years of dedicated service to the national and international communities of astronomers, including her expert assessments of progress in all fields of astrophysics and her significant roles in supporting organizations, boards, committees and foundations in the cause of astronomy." She is famous for an annual review of astronomy and astrophysics research that was published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and often gives summary reviews at astrophysical conferences. In 2018, she was elected a Patron of the American Astronomical Society, for her many years of intellectual, organizational, and financial contributions to the society.