Biography
Born on September 13, 1918, in Canada, he moved to the United States where he received his B.S. and PhD in astronomy from the University of Michigan in 1942. In 1945, he was hired by IBM to do backup calculations for the Manhattan Project working at Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University. According to an IBM history, he had been previously employed as an optical engineer in defense industry and was eager to return to research. In 1951, he went on to work on Project Whirlwind at MIT, and on other early computer projects at General Electric. Back at IBM, he served as their first space program manager in 1958-1959.
Grosch served as editor of the journal Computerworld from 1973 to 1976, and he was the president of the American Rocket Society (which became the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) and the Association for Computing Machinery from 1976 to 1978.
Grosch received the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows Award in 1995, and the citation that accompanied it read, "A computer pioneer who managed important space and technology projects, Grosch is respected for discovering and describing the relationship between speed and cost of computers."
He holds the distinction of being the second scientist hired by IBM (after Wallace J. Eckert) and the first employee at that company with facial hair, at a time when beards were prohibited by IBM.
Read more about this topic: Herb Grosch
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)