Joan Fischer Targ, computer literacy activist
She was a resident of Palo Alto and had lived in the area for 36 years.
Born in Moscow, Targ moved often as a child and eventually came to California to attend the College of Notre Dame in Belmont to earn her master's degree in education.
She taught at Peninsula schools, including Jordan Middle School in Palo Alto, where she coordinated a computer-literacy program for gifted children. Targ created the Institute of Microcomputing in Education at Stanford University as well as the Stanford International Micro Computer Institute with her business partner, computer scientist Jeff Levinsky.
For her efforts in computer education, her husband, Russell Targ, called her a "visionary and pioneer in many areas of the city." Most recently, she was involved in a 20-year-long, but eventually successful, court battle over her proposal for an organic farm on her land in Portola Valley.
She was also the sister of chess champion Bobby Fischer and is credited with teaching him how to play.
She is survived by her husband; two sons, Alexander Targ of Palo Alto and Nicholas Targ of Washington, D.C.; a daughter, Elizabeth Targ of San Francisco; and three grandchildren.
Services have been held.
At fifteen, he became the youngest grandmaster in history. "And Bobby did all this," his sister proudly points out, "in a country almost totally without a chessculture. It was if an Eskimo had cleared a tennis court in the snow, taught himself the game and gone on to win the championship.
Bobby Fischer vs. the rest of the World - page 51
Elizabeth Targ 
Daughter of Joan Fischer and niece of Bobby Fischer. She received $800,000 from the Department of Defense to head a four-year study of the effects of alternative healings on patients with breast cancer. One fascinating study concerned remote healing of tumors on mice. The study showed that the healers who were farthest from the mice had the greatest influence in shrinking the tumors!
"To provide evidence
for the most hard-headed skeptics that pre-cognition is possible, she
set up an
experiment to predict the market in silver futures. It worked
spectacularly, and
I suspect she could have continued with it to become very rich. But she
understood even then that what's most important in life are your
intentions." Stephen
Kiesling
Elizabeth Targ
died of braincancer last summer (2002).