-
Born in 1906
Grace Hopper, the great-granddaughter of US Navy admiral Alexander Wilson Russell, was born in New York City in 1906. -
Bachelor's degree (Vassar)
A talented and hardworking student, she graduated from Vassar in 1928 with a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics. Legacy of Grace Hopper, Vassar website -
Ph.D. (Yale)
In 1934, she became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University. -
WAVES (Navy)
Until the start of WWII, women were not accepted in the Navy. However, in 1943, the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES) organization was instituted and Hopper joined the corps. After training, she was assigned to work at the Bureau of Ordinance Computation project under the guide of Howard Aiken. -
Mark I
She was one of the top figures in the development and programming of the Mark I, released in 1944. This was certainly not her only accomplishment, but Hopper, by nature a witty and lively speaker, pointed out more than once that liked to be introduced as simply “the third programmer of the first computer” -
Fun Fact: "debugging"
Grace Hopper is credited with the invention of the terms "bug" and "debugging" referring to computer errors. According to a popular story, she was working on the Mark II computer at Harvard, when her associates found a moth (stuck in one of the relays) that was preventing the machine from working correctly. Hopper suggested that they had "debugged" the system. -
UNIVAC
Hopper joined Heckert and Mauchly’s computer startup in 1949 and was promoted to “director of automatic programming for the UNIVAC division” in 1954. -
A-Series Compiled Languages
In 1952, Hopper worked on the creation of the A-0 (Arithmetic Language, version 0) compiler. The A-2 version was released in 1953, and it was “perhaps the first example of free and open-source software because customers were given the source code and encouraged to send in suggested improvements”. -
FLOW-MATIC
FLOW-MATIC, originally known as B-0 (Business Language version 0), was released in 1958. Hopper was a major contributor in writing this language, developed to be used on the Univac I. -
COBOL
In 1959, she was invited to be part of a group called CODASYL (Committee for data Systems Languages), which was “set up to develop COBOL specifications” .
COBOL, an acronym for common business-oriented language for programming, first appeared in 1959 and is still in use today. COBOL statements have an English-like syntax, designed to be self-documenting and highly readable. -
COBOL-Syntax
One of Hopper’s most important contributions to programming design was her conviction that “computers should speak human-like languages, rather than requiring humans to speak computer languages”. This belief, although not fully shared by Hopper’s coevals, later became a guiding principle in designing modern programming languages. -
Period: to
Navy Programming Languages Group
Between 1967 and 1977, Grace Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy’s Office of Information Systems Planning. -
Captain
Hopper was promoted to the rank of captain in 1973. -
US Navy Rear Admiral
She was promoted to the rank of rear admiral in 1983. -
Retirement
She retired in 1986, aged 80, the United States’ oldest military officer in uniform. -
Died in 1992
Hopper died at the age of 85, in 1992, and “was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.” -
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference was instituted in 1994, and it has since “brought together an increasing number of women (and now men) to address the disappointing gender imbalance in IT professions.”.
Link to website -
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Her “contribution to the security or national interest of the United States” led to President Obama awarding her the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously, in 2016.