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While
in high school, he earned varsity letters in soccer, golf and track,
participated in school political debate activities, receiving on
graduation an honors grade in American History, awarded by the New York
State Board of Regents.
During the spring term of his senior year in high school, still only 17,
he entered the employ of IBM, commencing what was to become a 40 year
career with the company. He began as a pinsetter in the bowling alleys
of IBM’s employee country club, and after graduation was assigned to the
mail room of the Poughkeepsie Development Laboratory. He was then
promoted in 1954 to electronics technician and system programmer on
Project SAGE, the world’s first supercomputer and prototype for NORAD
and stationed at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. In 1956, recognizing his
work performance and abilities, the Corporation subsequently underwrote
his university attendance while he remained an employee, leading to a
BSEE degree (summa cum laude, 1960) from Clarkson University and the AM
(1961) and PhD (1965) degrees in Applied Physics from Harvard
University.
While attending Clarkson (1956-60), he returned to work summers at IBM
on thin magnetic film memory development, silicon epitaxial film growth
and laser spectroscopy. During this period, he carried out research on
magneto-resistive and Hall Effect thin ferromagnetic film devices,
forerunners of today’s spintronics technologies, which also formed the
central topic of his senior thesis and later resulted in two patents.
The summer following his first year at Harvard was spent back at IBM
designing and constructing one of the first, if not the first, thin film
evaporation chamber with the capability to measure in-situ reflection
electron diffraction during film growth, now known as RHEED. This
facility was later used to make samples for his PhD thesis at Harvard
which addressed the optical properties and band structure of
semiconductor thin films.
Upon completing graduate school, Dr. Grant was posted to the IBM San
Jose Research Laboratory (now the IBM Almaden Research Center) where he
pursued a variety of basic research studies on the physical properties
of magnetic semiconductors, organic and polymer metals, and high
temperature superconductors and contributed to the initial development
of laboratory automation software and systems. During this period of his
career, he also helped organize, manage and participated in the research
effort on magneto-resistive read head technology, variations of which
are now employed in every computer hard drive in the world. From 1986 to
1989, he became deeply involved in and associated with the discovery
period of high temperature superconductivity, and managed the research
activities at the Almaden Center. He is a co-inventor on the
international base patent for high temperature superconductivity. During
this period, he was designated as one of IBM’s corporate spokespersons
to the press and media on high temperature superconductivity.
Grant’s long IBM career also encompassed divisional executive staff
assignments and responsibilities to evaluate IBM’s printer, storage and
display technologies, the latter leading to the development of the IBM
ThinkPad laptop TFT-LCD flat panel monitor, culminating in 1990 – 1992
with a two-year sabbatical as IBM Visiting Professor of Materials
Science at the National University of Mexico where he carried out
quantum Monte Carlo computations on model spin Hamiltonians.
In 1993, on the occasion of his 40th anniversary at IBM, Grant retired
to accept a position as Science Fellow at the Electric Power Research
Institute (EPRI) where he oversaw an annual $5M program consisting of
exploratory studies on wide bandgap semiconductors and power
applications of superconductivity. In addition, he served as a
consultant to EPRI’s executive management and utility membership on a
broad range of energy science issues, including hydrogen, power line
communication, fusion, fission, superconducting transmission cables, and
photovoltaic generation of electricity, as well as many multifarious
claims of “free energy” violating basic principles of thermodynamics and
quantum mechanics. In 2000, in collaboration with Dr. Chauncey Starr,
EPRI’s Founder, he developed the concept of the SuperGrid, a symbiosis
of Nuclear, Hydrogen, Superconductivity, Solar-PV-Roofs and
Urban-Biomass-Combustion technologies supplying carbon-free,
non-eco-invasive “Green Energy” for Planet Earth.
In early 2004, Grant retired from EPRI to undertake a modest consultancy
practice, W2AGZ Technologies, as well as to return to his career-wise
interest and investigation into the basic mechanisms of
superconductivity, especially exploring paths which have the potential
to enable materials superconducting at room temperature and above. He
continues to write and lecture on general energy issues as well as the
SuperGrid Vision.
Dr. Grant has published over 120 papers in scientific peer-reviewed
journals, as well as numerous articles on science and energy issues in
the popular press, which have earned him several awards as a science
writer and commentator. These are in addition to editorials and
interviews on various political and social issues which have appeared in
the San Jose Mercury News, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,
the Financial Times, and Nature. In addition, Grant has been interviewed
on a number of international and cable television outlets, such as ABC
Good Morning America, all of the US national news network (ABC, NBC,
CBS, Fox) on the occasion of the 1987 Nobel Award to Bednorz and
Mueller, as well as Nova, Horizon, Beyond 2000 (Australian Broadcast
Company), and several other networks. Recently (2008), he was
interviewed on camera regarding the SuperGrid Vision by the Canadian
Broadcast Company, BBC, and CBS News 60 Minutes on the 20th anniversary
of the announcement of “cold fusion.” He has written over a dozen
commentaries and book reviews for the respected journal, Nature and its
companion publications. He has advised bipartisan members of the US
Congressional Committees on Science and Energy on various policy issues.
Dr. Grant is a Senior Life Fellow of the American Physical Society and
has served on the Executive Committees of the Society for the Forum on
Industrial and Applied Physics and the Forum on Education, as well as
the editorial advisory board of The Industrial Physicist. In 2005, he
was appointed a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, United Kingdom in
recognition of his service on the editorial board of the Institute’s
Journal of Superconductivity. From 2005 - 2008, he had the honor of
being a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Applied Physics at
Stanford University.
Finally, Grant has served as a member of
various mountain rescue and avalanche control organizations, both in
professional and volunteer roles, for over 22 years (1962 – 1984) at
resorts from Vermont to California. He learned to ski at age five and
has continued to do so every year to the present. At one time, he was
certified as a Level II Paramedic by the American Association of
Orthopedic Surgeons, as well as accredited by the US National Forest
Service as skilled in the use of munitions for avalanche control.
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