Amazing Grace

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was one of the greatest female computer scientists in 20th century. She invented the first compiler for a computer programming language, and was one of those who popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first high-level programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term "debugging".

Curious girl and female mathematic professor

Hopper was born in New York City. She was curious as a child, a lifelong trait: at the age of seven she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked, and dismantled seven alarm clocks before her mother realized what she was doing (she was then limited to one clock).

She graduated from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master's degree at Yale University in 1930. Hopper began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.

In 1934, she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics as the first female who achieved the degree from Yale.

Glorious military career from WWII

In 1943, Hopper volunteered to serve in the WAVES. She gave up the current life and graduated first in her class at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

She served on the Mark I computer programming staff headed by Howard H. Aiken. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard.

First compiler

In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the UNIVAC I.

In 1952 she had an operational compiler. "Nobody believed that," she said. "I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic."

COBOL

In the spring of 1959, a new language COBOL (an acronym for Common Business-Oriented Language) was defined at the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL). brought together computer experts from industry and government. Hopper served as a technical consultant to the committee along with other computer experts from industry and government. The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the IBM equivalent, COMTRAN. Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English was captured and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date.

Retire and rehire

After Republican Representative Philip Crane saw her on a March 1983 segment of 60 Minutes, he championed H.J.Res. 341, a joint resolution originating in the House of Representatives, which led to her promotion to Commodore (Admiral, O-7) by special Presidential appointment. She remained on active duty for several years beyond mandatory retirement by special approval of Congress. In 1985, the rank of Commodore was renamed Rear Admiral (Lower Half). She retired (involuntarily) from the Navy on August 14, 1986. At a celebration held in Boston on the USS Constitution to celebrate her retirement, Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.

She was then hired as a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation, a position she retained until her death in 1992, aged 85.

Ambassador of computer science

Her primary activity in this capacity was as a goodwill ambassador, lecturing widely on the early days of computers. So during many of her lectures, she illustrated a nanosecond using salvaged obsolete Bell System 25 pair telephone cable, cut it to 11.8 inch (30 cm) lengths, the distance that light travels in one nanosecond, and handed out the individual wires to her listeners. Although no longer a serving officer, she always wore her Navy full dress uniform to these lectures, which is allowed by US Navy uniform regulations.

The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, "Try it." And I back them up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir them up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances.

Owing to her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace". The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) is named for her, as is the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC.

Grace Hopper and encouragement of women

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.

More information could be found here:

http://ghc.anitaborg.org