Robert Motherwell an American abstract expressionist painter and printmaker was born in Aberdeen on January 24, 1915.
Physicist Douglas Dean Osheroff shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996 with David Lee and Robert C. Richardson for discovering the superfluidic nature of 3He was born in Aberdeen on August 1, 1945.
Trisha Brown born on November 25, 1936, became a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer formed the Trisha Brown Company, one of the leading contemporary schools of dance. She received a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 1991.
Lee Friedlander a famous American photographer and artist, born in Aberdeen, on July 14, 1934. He focused on "social landscape."
Kurdt Vanderhoof of heavy metal-band Metal Church is from Aberdeen.
For a town of its size, Aberdeen has produced a surprising number of well-known people. Famous Aberdonians include painter Robert Motherwell, Nobel-winning physicist Douglas Osheroff, photographer Lee Friedlander, choreographer Trisha Brown, artist Elton Bennett, former Detroit Lions and St. Louis Cardinals Defensive End Mike Melinkovich, former Denver Broncos quarterback, John Elway, former Pittsburgh Steelers and Houston Texans tight-end Mark Bruener, aerospace and computer engineer Matthew Ian Wright and his entourage James "Call me by my given name" Nelson, Gary "Monster" Mckee,Vincent Fett, pollster Jack Elway (father of John Elway, the football hero), novelist Robert Cantwell, professional wrestler "American Dragon" Bryan Danielson, software engineer Peter Norton and Jeff Burlingame, author of Kurt Cobain: Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind. Victor Grinich, who was born in Aberdeen in 1924 was a pioneer in the semiconductor industry and a member of the Traitorous Eight that founded Silicon Valley, and adult film actress Violet Blue.
Aberdeen is best known, however, for producing seminal grunge and punk rock bands and musicians such as Nirvana including Kurt Cobain (born in Aberdeen at Grays Harbor Community Hospital), and Dale Crover, of The Melvins. The other early Melvins also had some kind of connection with Aberdeen or nearby Montesano. When Dillard left the band in 1984 Dale Crover joined and the band's rehearsals moved to a back room of Crover's parents house in Aberdeen, Washington. Likewise, many of the earliest Nirvana rehearsals were held in Aberdeen, and some of Cobain's lyrics, in songs such as "Something in the Way" and some of the Bleach album referred to locations within the town. Although grunge was sometimes referred to as the "Seattle Sound", it has been argued that because Nirvana did not come from the city itself, that they had a slight outsider status within the scene, which was actually beneficial.
Krist Novoselic was born in Compton, California, but moved to Aberdeen in his youth, where he met Cobain.