An obituary by his Indiana University colleague, Nino Cocchiarella.
"Grossmann was well known among his colleagues for his eagerness to discuss philosophical problems and to engage in sustained debate on fundamental positions." Sounds right. When I, a stranger, wrote Grossmann sometime in the '80s and posed some questions for him, he responded in a thorough and friendly manner. May peace be upon him.
Here is another obituary by Javier Cumpa and Erwin Tegtmeier. It ends with a tantalizing reference to the book Grossmann was working on when felled by a massive stroke: Facts. I hope Grossmann's literary executors make the manuscript available.
The summer of '84 found me in Bloomington, Indiana. Thanks to the largesse of the American taxpayer, I was a 'seminarian' in Hector-Neri Castaneda's NEH Summer Seminar. One afternoon we repaired to a bar where we encountered Professor Grossmann. He told a story about the 19th century German philosopher Kuno Fischer, who was a big name in his day and a professor at Heidelberg. One day some workmen were making a racket outside his apartment. This incensed the good professor and he warned the workmen: "If you don't stop making this noise, I will leave Heidelberg!" The workmen stopped. Grossmann remarked that if Quine were to have lodged a similar complaint, the workmen would have laughed and bid him goodbye.
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