Moore and Grove both knew the young Hungarian refugee was Intel's rising leader.

In 1970, the two were walking in the Washington, D.C. zoo. According to a 1997 Time magazine article, Moore turned to Grove and said then "One day you'll run Intel."

In 1979 Grove became the president of Intel, and in 1987, CEO. The company was his.

The Man Behind the Mask

Almost all those who know Grove intimately describe his intensity with a mixture of awe and admiration.

"He has a fundamental intellectual curiosity," says Joshua Cooper Ramo, who wrote Time's 1997 Man of the Year article on Grove. "When there are problems to be solved--whether it is scientific, like how to make a better semiconductor, or business-related, like how to build a business from scratch or where to build a multi-million dollar plant, he will solve them."

And he will solve them at any cost. A fierce competitor, it was Grove who coined the term "Only the Paranoid Survive." Although a takeoff on the famous words of Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, the phrase--which became the title of his 1994 best-selling book--has become a sort of mantra for the go-getters of the New Economy.

When other computer companies struggled through a slowdown in the U.S. economy and fierce competition from the Japanese in the early 1980s, Grove bucked an industry trend and refused to fire his workers. Instead, he asked them to work harder: more hours, more efficiently and no extra pay. Not exactly Santa Claus--but it worked