Dr. Theodore Grosvenor was born on April 19, 1923, and earned his BS-Optometry degree from Ohio State in 1946. He then practiced for 10 years in Franklin, Ohio, located in the southwestern part of the state. Apparently, private practice was not intellectually stimulating enough for him, because he decided to return to Ohio State for a PhD degree under Dr. Glenn Fry, which he received in 1956.
He served on the Ohio State Optometry faculty for a short time before moving on to faculty appointments at the University of Houston College of Optometry, the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, the University of Montreal, the Illinois College of Optometry, and Indiana University School of Optometry. He was the founding head of the Diploma in Optometry Program at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and was also an adjunct professor at the Pacific University College of Optometry in Forest Grove, Oregon later in his career.
Dr. Grosvenor had an international reputation in optometric education for students in both the United States and abroad. He authored or coauthored seven optometric textbooks, including The Myopia Epidemic-Nearsightedness, Vision Impairment and Other Vision Problems in 2002, which was intended for the public. He also chaired the Scientific Program Committee of the American Academy of Optometry for many years and was honored with the Academy’s Garland Clay Award in 1988 and Life Fellowship in the Academy in 1995.
He passed away on March 3, 2009, in Tucson, Arizona.