Andrew Grove

Andrew "Andy" Stephen Grove (born Gróf András István; 2 September 1936 – 21 March 2016) was a Hungarian-American businessman and engineer who served as the third CEO of Intel Corporation. He left Hungary during the 1956 revolution at the age of 20 and moved to the United States, where he finished his education. He was the third employee and eventual third CEO of Intel, transforming the company into the world's largest semiconductor company.

As a result of his work at Intel, along with his books and professional articles, Grove had a considerable influence on the electronics manufacturing industries worldwide. He has been called the "guy who drove the growth phase" of Silicon Valley. In 1997, Time magazine chose him as "Man of the Year", for being "the person most responsible for the amazing growth in the power and the innovative potential of microchips." One source notes that by his accomplishments at Intel alone, he "merits a place alongside the great business leaders of the 20th century."

Grove was born as Gróf András István to a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, the son of Mária and György Gróf. At the age of four he contracted scarlet fever, which was nearly fatal and caused partial hearing loss.

When he was eight, the Nazis occupied Hungary and deported nearly 500,000 Jews to concentration camps, including Auschwitz. To avoid being arrested, Grove and his mother took on false identities and were sheltered by friends. His father, however, was arrested and taken to an Eastern Labor Camp where he was severely tortured and forced to do slave labor. The father was reunited with his family only after the war.

After completing his Ph.D. in 1963, Grove worked at Fairchild Semiconductor as a researcher, and by 1967 had become its assistant director of development. His work there made him familiar with the early development of integrated circuits, which would lead to the "microcomputer revolution" in the 1970s. In 1967, he wrote a college textbook on the subject, Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices.

In 1968, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore co-founded Intel, after they and Grove left Fairchild Semiconductor. Grove joined on the day of its incorporation, although he was not a founder. Fellow Hungarian émigré Leslie L. Vadász was Intel's fourth employee. Grove worked initially as the company's director of engineering, and helped get its early manufacturing operations started. In 1983, he wrote a book, High Output Management, in which he described many of his methods and manufacturing concepts.

Initially, Intel primarily manufactured static memory chips for mainframe computers, but in the early/mid-1970s Intel introduced one of the earliest digital watches, an electronic calculator, and also the world's first general-purpose microprocessor, the 4-bit 4004. By 1974 Intel had developed the 8-bit 8008 and quickly thereafter, in 1975, the 8080 processor, which would become the core of the Altair, the world's first so-called PC (personal computer) which foreshadowed the PC revolution. Soon came the 8086 16-bit microprocessor and a cost-reduced version, the 8088, which IBM chose for its IBM PC which brought personal computers to the masses. In 1985, Intel produced the 32-bit 80386 microprocessor which began a long line of increasingly powerful microprocessors including the 80486, the Pentium, and a plethora of supporting integrated circuits and computers built with them.

Even though Intel had invented most of the types of memory in use at the time including EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory), by 1985, with less demand for their memory chips due to the challenges created by Japanese "dumping" of memory chips at below-cost prices, Grove was forced to make radical changes. As a result, he chose to discontinue producing DRAMs and focus instead on manufacturing microprocessors. Grove, along with Intel's sales manager to IBM, Earl Whetstone, played a key role in negotiating with IBM to use only Intel microprocessors in all of their new personal computers.

The company's revenue increased from $2,672 in its first year (1968) to $20.8 billion in 1997. Grove was appointed Intel's president in 1979, CEO in 1987, and then chairman of the board in 1997. In May 1998 Grove relinquished the post of CEO to Craig Barrett, as Grove had been diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years earlier, though he remained chairman until November 2004. Since then Grove remained at Intel as a senior advisor, and has also been a lecturer at Stanford University. He reflected back upon Intel's growth through the years:

Grove received honorary degrees from the City College of New York (1985), Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1989) and Harvard University (2000).

Grove was named Time Person of the Year in 1997.

In 2004, the Wharton School of Business recognized him as the "Most Influential Business Person of the Last 25 Years."

The 1st Annual Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy and Employment. Grove received the award in 1995, and he was honored by the foundation for representing a story "as old as America: the story of a young immigrant rising to great success." The donors of the award added that Grove "has played perhaps the single most pivotal role in the development and popularization of the twentieth century's most remarkable innovation – the personal computer."

On August 25, 2009, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that Grove would be one of 13 California Hall of Fame inductees in The California Museum's yearlong exhibit. The induction ceremony was on 1 December 2009 in Sacramento, California.

A. S. Grove (1967). Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-32998-3.

A. S. Grove (1988). One on One With Andy Grove. Penguin Putnam. ISBN 0-14-010935-8.

A. S. Grove (1995). High Output Management. Random House. ISBN 0-679-76288-4. (originally published in 1983)

A. S. Grove (1996). Only the Paranoid Survive. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-48258-2.

A. S. Grove (2001). Swimming Across: A Memoir. Grand Central. ISBN 0-446-67970-4.