Herbert Gross was born in 1955. He studied Physics at the University of Stuttgart and joined Carl Zeiss in 1982 where he worked in the department of optical design. His special areas of interest are the development of simulation methods, optical design software and algorithms, the modelling of laser systems and the simulation of problems in physical optics, and the tolerancing and measurement of optical systems. Since 1995, he headed the central optical design department at Zeiss. Dr. Gross served as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences at Aalen, at the University of Lausanne, and the Technical University of Ilmenau, and gave seminars for the Photonics Net of Baden Württemberg as well as several internal company courses. In 1995, he received his PhD from the University of Stuttgart for a work on the modelling of laser beam propagation in the partial coherent region. Since 2012 he is a Professor for the theory of optical systems at Jena University, Germany.