More about Grant

Grant Munsey was a brilliant computer scientist. He was born in Los Angeles to Clarence and Frances Munsey. Grant attended Orange Coast College and UC Berkeley, and graduated from UC Irvine with a BSEE.

Grant was an independent spirit. He had broad scientific knowledge and interests, including biochemistry, mathematics, sign language, and the brain (especially the physiology of visual perception). As a senior at Irvine in 1969, Grant built a robot that roamed freely around the Engineering Building, avoiding obstacles, going around corners, and plugging itself into wall outlets when it needed a charge. Grant played the tuba in the UC Berkeley band. He played the guitar and drums, and sang well. He had wide-ranging and unusual interests, including radio-controlled gliders, tap-dancing, figure-skating, photography, bird-watching, astronomy, and electronic music. He trained as a race-car driver and pilot, and flew aerobatics. He was extremely personable and funny.

Grant began his long career in computers as a tech support specialist for Hewlett-Packard. Grant excelled in that job, and became the highest-level tech support specialist in the company in the 1970's; he was called in to solve only the most difficult cases. As a young man, Grant traveled around the world, wherever a major HP installation had a problem.

Grant was a founder of numerous start-up companies in the late 1970’s and 80’s: Onyx Systems, Plexus Computers, CadLinc, Opus Systems, and Ashlar.

For ten years, Grant owned a budgerigar (Floyd R. Budgie) who accompanied him to work at various start-up companies; Grant and Floyd were the subject of a featured story in the Palo Alto Weekly.

I (Sandy) had a career in the computer industry before I began teaching philosophy at West Valley College in Saratoga. Grant and I met while we both were working at Opus Systems in 1984. We married in 1991.

After Grant and I became financially secure, he worked only on projects that interested him. In the 1990’s Grant took a year off to study the C. elegans nematode, and another year studying the human genome and protein folding. In the mid-1990’s Grant founded his own company, Cognicon, Inc., to sell various useful software products he wrote.

In 1994-95 Grant developed his Picture Understanding System -- a name he liked but could not use because of the unfortunate acronym. PUS became Free-D, innovative software that transformed two-dimensional images into three-dimensional models, freeing the two-dimensional image from the limits of 2-D. Grant was able to patent the Free-D software. Adobe Systems bought Free-D in 1997, and added it to Photoshop Version 5.0. Grant worked at Adobe until he became ill in 2001. Shortly before his illness, he was promoted to Principal Scientist; he was the only person without an advanced degree to hold that title.

Grant was much loved at Adobe. When he became ill and unable to communicate, his engineer friends at Adobe did everything they could to build assistive devices for him. Adobe Human Resources people oversaw his insurance coverage for as long as possible (his care cost them millions of dollars). Grant's memorial service was held at Adobe's headquarters in San Jose.

In March of 2001 Grant developed what appeared to be an ordinary case of the flu. Unfortunately his case was very unusual. A very rare complication of viral infection is encephalitis. Grant fell into a deep coma lasting eight weeks. Most of the brain stem cells controlling voluntary movement were destroyed, with the result that Grant became a C3 quadriplegic. Though he was fully conscious for extended periods -- he was somewhat able to listen to music and books on tape -- he was unable to maintain consistent wakefulness. He never recovered much ability to speak or move, and was bed-ridden until his death on Christmas Day 2005.