Gross was born on September 11, 1904, in
Kraków, Poland to a prominent Jewish family. He studied for a degree in medicine at the
Jagiellonian University. He escaped from
occupied Poland in 1940 soon after the 1939 Nazi invasion and travelled to the United States, ultimately serving in the
United States Armed Forces during
World War II. After the war, he joined other scientists (notably
Rosalyn Yalow, recipient of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology) in the "Golden Age" of research at the
Bronx Veterans Administration Medical Center, becoming director of the Cancer Research Division. One story claims that this appointment allowed him to move his research mice from the trunk of his car, where he had been carrying out studies, into a fully equipped laboratory. Gross was also a medical journalist and frequent letter writer to
The New York Times. In one letter, he opposed
fluoridation of the water supply to prevent tooth decay, calling fluoride "an insidious poison, harmful, toxic and cumulative in its effect, even when ingested in minimal amounts." He never changed his view. He died at
Montefiore Medical Center on July 19, 1999, of
stomach cancer at age 94. == Research work ==