Grace Brewster Murray Hopper

Grace Hopper was born in 1906 in New York, USA

Dec 9, 1906

Phi Beta Kappa

1928

Grace Hopper graduated from Phi Beta Kappa in Vassar College. This is a prestigious academic society.

Grace Hopper graduated from Vassar

1928

Grace graduated from Vassar College with a Bachelors of Arts in Mathematics and physics.

Grace attends Yale

1930

Grace received a Masters of Arts from Yale.

Grace Murray becomes Hopper

Jul 15, 1930

Then Grace Murray gets married to Vincent Foster Hopper.

Grace earns her PHD

1934

Grace earns her P.H.D from Yale. This is not something at was normal for women to achieve in this time. P.H.Ds where only obtained by males.

Grace the Teacher

1934

Grace Hopper taught Mathematics at Vassar College while working to complete her doctorate at Yale University.

Grace Joins Navel Waves Program

Dec 5, 1941

Grace joins the Waves program which in this time was the only way a women can serve her country. Grace was originally rejected because of her age and weight as she was a little woman. Grace then threatened to quit her job at Vassar if they did not reconsider. Knowing her abilities they made an exception to this rule.

Pearl Harbor

Dec 7, 1941

The attack on Pearl Harbor greatly influenced Grace Hopper to join the Navy. Grace Hopper also come from a long line for family that have served in the Navy and made it to Rear Admiral.

Giving credit where it is due.

1944

Grace Hopper was ordered to go to Harvard University to work with Howard Aiken on his computer Mark 1. Aiken was not thrilled about having a female amongst his ranks. After see her capabilities Aiken made her his number two person in charge of the project.

Grace and Vincent Divorce

1945

Shortly thereafter Grace and Vincent Hopper divorced. They had not children together. Grace Murray continued using Hopper as her last name.

Looks like we have a bug in the system.

Sep 9, 1947

Grace Hopper is credited with coining of the term de-bugging. When she was working on the MarkII she had found a moth that was dead trapped within the computer. There are large debates on who coined this term first as Thomas Edison had also used this term in the 1800s. When addressing computers Grace Hoppers version of de-bugging is still in used till this day.

The compiler was born

1951

Grace Hopper invented the computer Compiler. This is a program hat take understandable language for humans and translates it into the binary language that the computer can understand.

Development of UNIVAC

Mar 31, 1951

Grace Hopper contributed to the the development of the UNIVAC. This was the first all electric digital computer.

FLOW-MATIC

1955

FLOW-MATIC was developed through Remington Rand under Grace Hopper which also the precursor of the COBOL language program.

The invention of COBOL

Apr 8, 1961

Grace Hopper invented COBOL which is program that takes high level computer language and translates it into other programs that computer can understand.

Commander and Chief

Dec 26, 1966

Grace Hopper was involuntarily retired due to her age. She was 60 years old and it was required that every one retire from the Navy at this age. Grace retired as a Commander and Chief of the US Navy.

Recalled

1985

Grace was recalled to active duty in the US Navy. She was then known as the oldest with in the Navy. Hopper also was promoted to Rear Admiral in which she was the first woman to ever achieve this rank.

Grace was known as the best Letterman host ever

Oct 2, 1986

The passing of a legend

Jan 1, 1992

Grace Hopper passed away on New Years Day in her sleep of natural causes. She will forever be remembered as the queen of Code.