Gracehopper

The Work of Grace Hopper

  • Born

    Born Grace Brewster Murray in New York City.
  • Taught Mathematics at Vassar

    Taught mathematics at Vassar while attending the doctorate program at Yale .
  • Graduated from Yale

    Grace Hopper was the 11th woman to graduate from Yale with a math doctorate.
  • The Beginning of WWII

    The start of World War II inspired Grace Hopper to join the US Naval Reserve.
  • Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project

    Hopper was commissioned as a lieutenant, given her background as a mathematician she was assigned to a project hosted at Harvard. It is at Harvard that Grace Hopper would learn to program the Mark I.
  • Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation

    Grace Hopper joins EMCC and earned her respect for her technical talents, gender aside.
  • Compiler For Computer Languages

    Grace Hopper and her coworkers created a the first compiler for computer languages. This was known as FLOW-MATIC.
  • Building Block for Further Developments

    Grace Hopper's work for the first computer compiler lead the way for the development of Common Business Oriented Language or COBOL.
  • COBOL

    IBM announced that COBOL would be their primary development language.
  • COBOL

    A standardized version of COBOL was approved by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for commercial use.
  • WIdley Used Programming Language

    By 1970, COBOL had become the most widely used programming language in the world.
  • Retirement

    At the age of 76, Grace Hopper retires from the Navy. She was also the oldest serving officer in the service.
  • National Medal of Technology

    Due to her work in the computer industry, Grace Hopper became the first female recipient of this honor.
  • Died

    Buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
  • Modern Programming

    While many organizations still use COBOL and training is on the rise, the lack of skills and burdensome text-based code is beginning to be replaced or integrated with more modern coding languages, such as Java ( created in 1995), .NET, and C++.