Grace Hopper: Computer scientist and luminary in US Navy

Born to Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne in New York in the year 1906, Grace Brewster Murray was a curious child who once dismantled seven alarm clocks to understand how it functioned. She attended the Hartridge School in New Jersey for preparatory education.

Academic pursuits

At the age of 16, she was rejected at the Vassar College because of insufficient marks in Latin. The next year, Hopper was enrolled at the same institution from which she went on to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Physics in the year 1928.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa (In US, an honorary society of undergraduates and some graduates to which members are elected on the basis of high academic achievement) from Vassar and earned a PhD in Mathematics from Yale.

She was married to Vincent Foster Hopper but the couple divorced in the year 1945.

Multifaceted career

While Hopper taught Mathematics at Vassar during World War II, she joined WAVES - the US Navy’s division for women. In 1944, the Navy assigned her to its Computation Project at Harvard where she worked on the first programmable computer. It was the beginning of a new career in the nascent field of computer science. She envisioned that one day people would use computers in everyday life and that her achievements would make that possible. In 1946, she resigned from Vassar to become a research fellow in Harvard’s Computation Laboratory. She took up the position in applied physics and engineering.

In 1967, Hopper took leave from Sperry Corporation to serve in the Navy. Later in the same year, she was called to service as a leader in the Naval Data Automation Command.

For 10 years after that, she was the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group.

In 1973, Hopper was promoted to the position of Captain. During her years in Navy, she was also called to create and standardise communication among other different computer languages.

In the year 1986, when Hopper retired as rear admiral aged 79, she was the oldest serving officer in the US armed forces.

Achievements and recognition

Hopper led the team which invented COBOL or Common-Business Oriented Language, one of the user-friendly computer software programs which can be used for business purpose. Though she did not invent the language, she definitely encouraged its adaptation.

In 1969, she was awarded the first Computer Science Man-of-the-Year Award from Data Processing Management Association. In 1973, she became the first woman and first US citizen to be honoured as the Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.

In 1986, she was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal. In the year 1991, she was awarded the National Medal of Technology. She was the first woman recipient of this honour.

During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Hopper was named after her, as was the Cray XE6 Hopper supercomputer at NERSC.

On January 1, 1992, the renowned computer scientist passed away in Arlington, Virginia. On November 22, 2016, Grace Hopper was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

Source: thefamouspeople.com, gracehopper.com

INTERESTING FACTS

1. Hopper earned PhD in Mathematics from Yale which was a rare accomplishment during that the time. Only 1,279 PhDs were awarded in the subject during the 72-years from 1862 to 1934, the year she received hers.

2. Hopper wrote the world’s first computer programming manual. She placed great value on documentation and being able to explain complex situations and problems to different audiences.

3. She is credited with having coined the terms ‘bug’ and ‘de-bug’. One day, a computer failure stumped Hopper and found a moth inside. Taping it to her log book, she wrote, ‘first actual bug found.’

4. Grace Hopper had twice retired from the Navy, once in the year 1966 and again in the year 1971, but was called back to active duty both times. When she did retire for the final time, it was in the year 1986.

5. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computer Science is a technical conference organised to encourage women to be part of the computing world. She encouraged young people to learn programming.