was born in Budapest, Hungary, as András Gróf. He crossed the Nazi invasion, he escaped the concentration camps with his mother with a false identity and endured several communist regimes. At age 20 he escaped to America unable to speak English, changed his name to Andrew Grove and went to work as a waiter. He knew in those days Eva Kastan, another Hungarian refugee, who would be his wife for 58 years. Until yesterday, when Grove died at age 79.
Three years after arriving in America, finished high school and, in 1963, obtained his doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1968, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore founded Intel, which would become the largest manufacturer of electronic brains in the world; Grove was the third employee of the company. Eleven years later, he would be named president of Intel (1979-1997) and then executive director (1987-1998). He was the man who convinced the company to focus on the electronic brains instead of memory chips, and transformed, with this, a colossus.
Grove was one of the most admired executives, dear and respected IT environment. He inspired, among others, Steve Jobs. Its management model rewarded the effort, encouraged innovation and equally despised privileges (never had its own parking space, for example) and the timorous. His motto was to take risks and never rest on their laurels. He believed that the success of a company contains the seed of its own destruction; Intel, his obsession was to avoid the deadly complacency. Undoubtedly, during his long tenure, he succeeded handsomely.
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