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Victor Grinich (November 24, 1924 - November 5, 2000) was a
pioneer in the semiconductor industry and a member of the Traitorous Eight that founded Silicon Valley.
His parents were Croatian immigrants and his original name was Victor
Grgurinović. He was born in Aberdeen, Washington. He
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".
Grinich received a Bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in 1950, and a PhD 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 published a textbook,
Introduction to Integrated Circuits.
Grinich died of prostate cancer in
2000.
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