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The Birth Of Grace Brewster Murray
Grace Brewster Murray was born on December 9, 1906 in New York City, USA (Strawn 1) -
What Makes This Tick?
Grace was a curious child. When she was seven years old she dismantled 7 clocks to investigate its mechanisms and determine how an alarm clock worked. (Grace Hopper 1) -
Early Education
Grace attended two conservative all-girls' Presbyterian schools in New York. The first was The Graham School, from 1912 to 1916; and the 2nd was the Miss Mary Schoonmaker’s School, from 1916 to 1923. (Grace Hopper 1) -
College & Wedding Bells
At the age of 21 Grace graduated from Vassar College in 1928 with her Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Physics.
She then received her Master's degree in Mathematics from Yale University in 1934. (Strawn 1)That same year she married and took the last name of a literature named Vincent Hopper. -
World War II
Grace felted compelled to serve her country during World War II so she joined the U.S. Naval Reserve.(Strawn 1) She was commissioned as a lieutenant and with her mathematics background, she was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, where she learned how to program a Mark I computer. (Strawn 1) -
Mark II- "Debugged"
A moth landed in one of the Mark II computer’s mechanical relays, causing the relay to fail and short out. Someone removed the moth, so the computer was "debugged." (Strawn 1) The word already existed in computing, but Hopper and her colleagues thought it was funny that they were the first people to literally debug a computer. -
A-0 System
Hopper and her team invented the world’s first compiler, the A-0 system. (Strawn 2)This system helped break the barrier of computers and translated user-friendly instructions to machine code. -
FLOW-MATIC
Grace was determined to invent a computer that relied on the English language instead of just mathematical symbols. In turn, she developed B-0 which became the FLOW-MATIC. (Rajaraman 2) The FLOW-MATIC allowed non-specialists to see what a program was actually doing and made the language easier for new programmers to learn. -
COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language)
COBOL was based on FLOW-MATIC and IBM’s COMTRAN language. (Strawn 2) This user-friendly business computer software became the dominant computer language in the 20th century. -
Man of The Year Award
In 1969, the Data Processing Management Association created a new award, the Computer Science Man of the Year award, and its first winner was Grace Hopper. (Rajaraman 3) -
BCP
In 1973, Hopper was the first woman and the first US citizen to be honored as the Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. (Rajaraman 3) -
RIP
At the age, of 85, Grace Hopper died of natural causes in her sleep on January 1, 1992, in Berkeley, California. (Strawn 1) She was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia. -
USS Hopper
In 1997, the Navy named a new guided-missile in her honor named the USS Hopper. (Strawn 2) -
The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women In Computing Conference
Hopper's legacy continues to live on and encourages young people and women to learn how to program and continue participating in the computing world. (Strawn 3) Hopper was remembered with a "Google Doodle" on her birthday in 2013. -
Her Legacy Will Live On
In 2016, Hopper was posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. Please click here to see Obama's speech. (Margaret Hamilton and Grace Hopper Medal of Freedom ceremony)
