Victor Grinich

Victor Grinich was a pioneer in the semiconductor industry and a member of the "Traitorous Eight" that founded Silicon Valley. The son of Croatian immigrants, he was born as Victor Grgurinovitch on November 24, 1924 in Aberdeen Washington.

Victor served in the United States Navy during World War II. To make his last name easier to pronounce during military roll calls, he officially changed it to "Grinich."

Victor Grinich received a Bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in 1945 and a Master's Degree in 1950, and then earned a Ph.D. in 1953 from Stanford University. He worked at the seminal Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory of Beckman Instruments, and then left with other disgruntled members of the Traitorous Eight to create the influential Fairchild Semiconductor corporation. In the 1960s, he left Fairchild Semiconductor to start teaching at UC Berkeley and Stanford University. In 1975 he and co-author Horace G. Jackson published the textbook "Introduction to Integrated Circuits".

Grinich passed away on November 4, 2000.