RADM Grace Murray Hopper-- computer scientist and programmer (COBOL)
Grace Hopper
Grace Murray Hopper
Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper, 1984
Nickname(s) "Amazing Grace"
Born December 9, 1906
New York City, New York, U.S.
Died January 1, 1992 (aged 85)
Arlington, Virginia, U.S.
Place of burial Arlington National Cemetery
Allegiance United States of America
Service/branch United States Navy
Years of service 1943–1966, 1967–1971, 1972–1986
Rank US-O7 insignia.svg Rear admiral (lower half)
Awards Defense Distinguished Service ribbon.svg Defense Distinguished Service Medal
Legion of Merit ribbon.svg Legion of Merit
Meritorious Service ribbon.svg Meritorious Service Medal
American Campaign Medal ribbon.svg American Campaign Medal
World War II Victory Medal ribbon.svg World War II Victory Medal
National Defense Service Medal ribbon.svg National Defense Service Medal
AFRM with Hourglass Device (Silver).jpg Armed Forces Reserve Medal with two Hourglass Devices
Naval Reserve Medal ribbon.svg Naval Reserve Medal
Presidential Medal of Freedom (posthumous)
Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (née Murray; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral.[1] In 1944, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer [2] and invented the first compiler for a computer programming language.[3][4][5][6][7]. She popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first high-level programming languages.
Owing to her accomplishments and her naval rank, she was sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace".[8][9] The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC.[10]
On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.[11]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
Grace Hopper Biography
Military Leader, Mathematician, Computer Programmer (1906–1992)
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Quick Facts
Name
Grace Hopper
Occupation
Military Leader, Mathematician, Computer Programmer
Birth Date
December 9, 1906
Death Date
January 1, 1992
Education
Yale University, Vassar College
Place of Birth
New York, New York
Place of Death
Arlington, Virginia
Maiden Name
Grace Brewster Murray
Nickname
Grandmother of Cobol
Grandma Cobol
Amazing Grace
Full Name
Grace Brewster Murray Hopper
Synopsis
Early Life
World War II
Career in Computing
Return to the Navy
Later Years and Legacy
Cite This Page
Computer programmer Grace Hopper helped develop a compiler that was a precursor to the widely used COBOL language and became a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.
IN THESE GROUPS
Famous People in Computing
Famous Yale University Alumni
Famous People Awarded Military Medals
Groundbreaking Women
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quotes
“People have an enormous tendency to resist change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that.”
—Grace Hopper
Synopsis
Born in New York City in 1906, Grace Hopper joined the U.S. Navy during World War II and was assigned to program the Mark I computer. She continued to work in computing after the war, leading the team that created the first computer language compiler, which led to the popular COBOL language. She resumed active naval service at the age of 60, becoming a rear admiral before retiring in 1986. Hopper died in Virginia in 1992.
Early Life
Born Grace Brewster Murray in New York City on December 9, 1906, Grace Hopper studied math and physics at Vassar College. After graduating from Vassar in 1928, she proceeded to Yale University, where, in 1930, she received a master's degree in mathematics. That same year, she married Vincent Foster Hopper, becoming Grace Hopper (a name that she kept even after the couple's 1945 divorce). Starting in 1931, Hopper began teaching at Vassar while also continuing to study at Yale, where she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1934—becoming one of the first few woman to earn such a degree.
World War II
Hopper, who became an associate professor at Vassar, continued to teach until World War II compelled her to join the U.S. Naval Reserve in December 1943 (she opted for the Navy, as it had been her grandfather's branch of service). She was commissioned as a lieutenant in June 1944. Given her mathematical background, Hopper was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, where she learned to program a Mark I computer.
Career in Computing
After the war, Hopper remained with the Navy as a reserve officer. As a research fellow at Harvard, she worked with the Mark II and Mark III computers. She was at Harvard when a moth was found to have shorted out the Mark II, and is sometimes given credit for the invention of the term "computer bug"—though she didn't actually author the term, she did help popularize it.
Wanting to continue to work with computers, Hopper moved into private industry in 1949, first with the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, then with Remington Rand, where she oversaw programming for the UNIVAC computer. In 1952, her team created the first compiler for computer languages (a compiler renders worded instructions into code that can be read by computers). This compiler was a precursor for the Common Business Oriented Language, or COBOL, a widely adapted language that would be used around the world. Though she did not invent COBOL, Hopper encouraged its adaptation.
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http://www.biography.com/people/grace-hopper-21406809#synopsis
Grace Hopper Celebration
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The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is the world's largest gathering of women technologists. It is produced by the Anita Borg Institute and presented in partnership with ACM.
http://ghc.anitaborg.org/
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I wrote papers using vi whenever I had a chance, and programs in pascal and FORTRAN. LISP was a big deal then, but i never thoroughly studied it.
We were allowed a certain allotment of printing on the big line printers, on 14 7/8 X 11 continuous feed paper, the kind with green bars on it, and we could buy laser prints for some absurd price per page, I think it was 15 cents. The laser printer was locked up in its own little room.
So I'd print my papers on the big line printers, 60 characters across, and slice them down to 8 1/2 X 11. Some professor balked at the green bars, but the copy machines in the library used green fluorescent tubes, rendering the green bars invisible in copies. ASB class notes were printed on red paper. If you tried to copy them they came out entirely black. Clever system that... class notes were ten cents a page and you couldn't copy them on the five cent per page library or bookstore copiers.
The computer lab had a couple of graphics terminals, but they were not generally available unless you knew someone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4010
Late at night and until dawn the graphics terminals often became game machines, until the school built a lab full of Apple IIs and took that pressure off.
I still have a complete set of Apple Pascal documentation and floppy disks. Apple Pascal was based on UCSD Pascal. I was more a machine language sort on the Apples, BASIC with lots of PEEKS and POKES. My first useful home computer was an Atari 800 and I could write school papers on that. I also went crazy with 6502 assembly language.
If I recall correctly we could also sign in to an HP A600, which was an HP 2000 series computer. I never played with that. BSD was like magic to me.
When I worked in a blood bank we used HP computers. We were testing for potential Y2K problems in the early 'nineties. COBOL stored years as a two digit BCD number, so say, 1979 would be stored as a "79." Bytes were expensive when COBOL was created. That economy sure came back to bite everyone in the ass.