Background
He was born in Aberdeen, Washington.
He was born in Aberdeen, Washington.
Grinich received a Bachelor"s degree from the University of Washington in 1945 and a Master"s degree in 1950, and then earned a Doctor of Philosophy in 1953 from Stanford University.
Victor served in the United States Navy during World World War World War II To make his last name easier to pronounce during military roll calls, he officially changed it to "Grinich". Among the physicists, mathematicians and metallurgists in the group, Mr. Grinich was the only electrical engineer
At Fairchild he set up the test lab and other electronic systems where he was responsible for device characterization and applications.
His department grew into the important Fairchild Instrumentation business. Grinich left Fairchild in 1968 to study computer science while teaching electrical engineering at University of California Berkeley.
He later taught at Stanford University as well. In 1975, he published a textbook, Introduction to Integrated Circuits.
In 1978, he was appointed chief executive officer of Identronix, a company that pioneered Radio-frequency identification systems, which are now used extensively in anti-theft tags.
In 1985, Grinich founded and became Chief Executive Officer of Escort Memory Systems to commercialize Radio Frequency IDentification tags for industrial applications. Express Mail Service was acquired by Datalogic in 1989. In 1993, he co-founded Arkos Design, a manufacturer of emulators.
The company was acquired by Synopsys in 1995.
Grinich retired in 1997. Grinich died of prostate cancer in 2000.
Initially a researcher at Socially Responsible Investment International, 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.