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Grace Hopper was born in New York City to Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne -
Hopper was accepted to Vassar to study mathematics and physics -
Hopper graduated Vassar with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics and physics and started Yale -
Grace graduated Yale with a PhD in mathematics
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Grace joined the United Sates Naval Reserves WAVES, Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service during WWII -
Hopper visited the Mark I, read Charles Babbage's memoirs, and began analyzing blue prints of the Mark I to learn to program it -
Grace Hopper wrote a book on the Mark I, detailing how it was invented, who was involved, and how the machine worked. -
At Harvard, Hopper worked with Bloch and Von Neumann on the Mark I. Bloch and Von Neumann as they wrote equations on a blackboard to be fed into the machine and Hopper would read off the results -
Grace Hopper was one of the six women sent to Aberdeen for training to program the ENIAC -
Hopper worked to develop the first computer compiler, called the A-O system with the Remington Rand corporation for the UNIVAC. The A-O system was a sequence of subroutines that helped to convert a specification so that a computer could execute the program. -
Hopper served at the technical lead in the creation of COBOL, the first cross-platform business language developed for computers -
Hopper worked to create the FLOW-MATIC language for the UNIVAC 1
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Hopper was called back to active duty in the Navy to help standardize their use of COBOL and work with COBOL compilers
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Hopper was named the first Computer Science Man of the Year by the Data Processing Management Association -
Grace Hopper became a naval captain and was awarded the Legion of Merit award by the United States Congress -
Grace retired from the Navy at the age of 79 with the rank of rear admiral, and was the Navy's oldest serving officer.
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Hopper was awarded the National Medal of Technology for her work on computers -
Grace Hopper died on New Year's Day at the age of 85