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Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City, New York to her parents, Mary and Franklin Murray. -
Grace Hopper graduated from Vassar College in 1928 with bachelors degrees in mathematics and physics. She also partook in Pi Beta Kappa which is the oldest academic honor society, and is extremely prestigious, making this a great honor for her to be involved. -
Grace Hopper attended Yale University and there she received her masters in mathematics. This fed her interest in mathematics further, and eventually led her to get her PhD in mathematics from Yale as well in 1934) -
Grace Hopper married her husband Vincent Hopper in 1930 who was an english professor at NYU. They then divorced in 1945 due to unknown reasons, however Grace was the one to divorce him. -
After receiving her masters at Yale University, Grace was offered a position as a math teacher at Vassar, making $800 per year. She worked for Vassar for 13 years up until she left for the Navy. -
Grace Hopper took a leave from Vassar and swore into the US Navy Reserve. She was one of the many women that volunteered to serve for WAVES(Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). This branch was established by Franklin Roosevelt which allowed the Navy to add Women into their branch. -
Grace Hopper was sent to harvard to begin work on the Harvard Mark I. This was one of the earliest general-purposed computers that was used during the final staged of World War II. -
Grace was hired to work at the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. She was to be a senior mathematician, and then became a director for UNIVAC for Remington Rand and the UNIVAC I became even more competitive in processing information than the Mark I. -
In 1950, the UNIVAC was known as the first known, large-scale, computer on the market. This gave the MARK I a run for its money, as the UNIVAC was developed under better circumstances, and allowed for a better product to be made. -
The FLOW-MATIC was the first English like data processing language, created by Grace Hopper at Remington Rand. This idea was doubted, however she was able to create a prototype to display her ability to create a device such as this. -
FLOW-MATIC became available to the public in early 1958 and then was finally completed in 1959. The compiler was quite complex, however Grace was able to produce one that would be available to the public and that individuals would understand. -
Hopper served as a technical consultant to the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL) during their 2 day conference, as she as friends with a few of its members. The idea was to expand FLOW-MATIC and apply it to business language. COmmon Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) held Hoppers same ideas regarding coding language, just for different people. -
Hopper was a strong advocate for the Defense department to upgrade to small distributed computers for its users. Anything located on those servers would be available to those on the network. She set standards for computer system testing and control testing. These standards were later used by NBS which is now known as NIST. -
After a more than 42 year career, and numerous titles including captain, commodore, and rear admiral. She had a tremendous career in the Navy and as all of her titles show, was well respected in the community. -
At the age of 85, Grace Hopper took her last breath and passed away. She passed away peacefully in her sleep from natural causes. She did receive full military honors in the Arlington National Cemetery.