Born September 13, 1918, in
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Grosch was the first baby to survive
incubator Grosch moved to
Midland, Ontario as a child, then
Pembroke, then
Chatham, and later
Windsor, Ontario. 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 was 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. On Grosch's religious views, he was an atheist. ==Professorships==