Grace Hopper facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Grace Hopper
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Photograph from 1984
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| Born |
Grace Brewster Murray
December 9, 1906 New York City, New York, U.S.
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| Died | January 1, 1992 (aged 85) Arlington County, Virginia, U.S.
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| Resting place | Arlington National Cemetery |
| Alma mater | Vassar College (BA) Yale University (MS, PhD) |
| Spouse(s) |
Vincent Foster Hopper
(m. 1930; div. 1945) |
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| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Service/ |
 United States Navy |
| Years of service | 1943–1986 |
| Rank |  Rear admiral (lower half) |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science Mathematics |
| Institutions |
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| Thesis | New Types of Irreducibility Criteria (1934) |
| Doctoral advisor | Øystein Ore |
Grace Brewster Hopper (née Murray; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and created the FLOW-MATIC programming language. COBOL, an early high-level programming language based on FLOW-MATIC, is still in use today.
Contents
Early life
Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City. She was the eldest of three children. Her parents, Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne, were of Scottish and Dutch descent.
Grace was very curious as a child; this was 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).
Education
For her preparatory school education, she attended the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. Grace was initially rejected for early admission to Vassar College at age 16 (because her test scores in Latin were too low), but she was admitted the following year. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master's degree at Yale University in 1930.
In 1934, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale under the direction of Øystein Ore. Her dissertation, "New Types of Irreducibility Criteria", was published that same year. She began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.
Career outline
When World War II began, Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy. She was rejected because she was 34 years old and was underweight. She instead joined the Navy Reserves, leaving her position at Vassar.
Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken.
In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At Eckert–Mauchly she managed the development of one of the first COBOL compilers. She believed that programming should be simplified with an English-based computer programming language. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers.
By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System. During her wartime service, she co-authored three papers based on her work on the Harvard Mark 1. She is accredited with writing the first computer manual, “A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.”
In 1954, Eckert–Mauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC.
In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. Hopper promoted use of the language throughout the 60s.
In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty. She was promoted to captain in 1973 by Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr..
Hopper was promoted to commodore on December 15, 1983 via the Appointments Clause by President Ronald Reagan. She remained on active duty for several years beyond mandatory retirement by special approval of Congress. Effective November 8, 1985, the rank of commodore was renamed rear admiral (lower half) and Hopper became one of the Navy's few female admirals.
Retirement
Following a career that spanned more than 42 years, Rear Admiral Hopper took retirement from the Navy on August 14, 1986. At the time, she was the oldest serving member of the Navy. At a celebration held in Boston on the USS Constitution to commemorate her retirement, Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.
She found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences. In this position, Hopper represented the company at industry forums, serving on various industry committees, along with other obligations.
At DEC Hopper served primarily as a goodwill ambassador. She lectured widely about the early days of computing, her career, and on efforts that computer vendors could take to make life easier for their users. She visited most of Digital's engineering facilities, where she generally received a standing ovation at the conclusion of her remarks. Although no longer a serving officer, she always wore her Navy full dress uniform to these lectures contrary to U.S. Department of Defense policy.
She retained the position with DEC until her death at age 85 in 1992.
Personal life
In 1930, Grace Murray married New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906–1976); they divorced in 1945. She did not marry again and retained his surname.
Personality
She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be "'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released."
Death
On New Year's Day 1992, Hopper died in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Arlington County, Virginia; she was 85 years of age. She was interred with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Anecdotes
- Debugging
While Hopper was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay and impeding the operation of the computer. After the insect had been extracted, it was affixed to a log sheet for that day with the notation, “First actual case of bug being found”. While neither she nor her crew members mentioned the exact phrase, "debugging", in their log entries, the case is held as a historical instance of "debugging" a computer and Hopper is credited with popularizing the term in computing. For many decades, the term "bug" for a malfunction had been in use in several fields before being applied to computers. The remains of the moth can be found taped into the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
- Nanoseconds
Hopper became known for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long—11.8 inches (30 cm)—the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum distance the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire 984 feet (300 meters) long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds.
Interesting facts about Grace Hopper
- Her great-grandfather, Alexander Wilson Russell, an admiral in the US Navy, fought in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.
- During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world.
- A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor.
- In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology.
- On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
- At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days), and had her retirement ceremony aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days).
- Admiral Hopper was the first ever person to be profiled twice on 60 Minutes, first in March 1983, and the second on 24-August-1986.
- She received the nickname "Grandma COBOL".
- Nvidia has named their current CPU generation Grace and GPU generation Hopper after Grace Hopper.
- The Navy's Hopper Information Services Center is named for her.
- The Navy named a guided-missile destroyer Hopper after her.
- On 30 June 2021, a satellite named after her (ÑuSat 20 or "Grace", COSPAR 2021-059AU) was launched into space.
Grace Hopper quotes
- “A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things.”
- “The most dangerous phrase in the language is,‘We've always done it this way.’”
- “Don't try to manage people; you manage things; you lead people.”
- “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 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances.”
- “If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.”
- “Leadership is a two-way street, loyalty up and loyalty down. Respect for one's superiors; care for one's crew.”
- “One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.”
Dates of rank
| Rank | Midshipman MIDN |
Lieutenant junior grade O-2 |
Lieutenant O-3 |
Lieutenant commander O-4 |
Commander O-5 |
Captain O-6 |
Commodore/ Rear admiral (lower half) O-7 |
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| Insignia | N/A |  |
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| Date | May 4, 1944 | June 27, 1944 | June 1, 1946 | April 1, 1952 | July 1, 1957 | August 2, 1973 | December 15, 1983/ redesignated November 8, 1985 |
Awards and honors
Military awards
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| Defense Distinguished Service Medal (1986) |
Legion of Merit (1967) |
Meritorious Service Medal (1980) |
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| Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016, Posthumous) |
American Campaign Medal (1944) |
World War II Victory Medal (1945) |
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| National Defense Service Medal with bronze service star (1953, 1966) |
Armed Forces Reserve Medal with two bronze hourglass devices (1963, 1973, 1983) |
Naval Reserve Medal (1953) |
Other awards
- 1964: Hopper was awarded the Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award, the Society's highest honor, "In recognition of her significant contributions to the burgeoning computer industry as an engineering manager and originator of automatic programming systems." In May 1955, Hopper was one of the founding members of the Society of Women Engineers.
- 1969: Hopper was awarded the inaugural Data Processing Management Association Man of the Year award (now called the Distinguished Information Sciences Award).
- 1971: The annual Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer Professionals was established in 1971 by the Association for Computing Machinery.
- 1973: Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
- 1973: First American and first woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
- 1981: Received an Honorary PhD from Clarkson University.
- 1982: American Association of University Women Achievement Award and an Honorary Doctor of Science from Marquette University.
- 1983: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
- 1985: Honorary Doctor of Science from Wright State University
- 1985: Honorary Doctor of Letters from Western New England College (now Western New England University).
- 1986: Received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal at her retirement.
- 1986: Received an Honorary Doctor of Science from Syracuse University.
- 1987: She became the first Computer History Museum Fellow Award Recipient "for contributions to the development of programming languages, for standardization efforts, and for lifelong naval service."
- 1988: Received the Golden Gavel Award, Toastmasters International.
- 1991: National Medal of Technology.
- 1991: Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- 1992: The Society of Women Engineers established three annual, renewable, "Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Scholarships"
- 1994: Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
- 1996: USS Hopper (DDG-70) was launched. Nicknamed Amazing Grace, it is on a very short list of U.S. military vessels named after women.
- 2001: Eavan Boland wrote a poem dedicated to Grace Hopper titled "Code" in her 2001 release Against Love Poetry.
- 2001: The Gracies, the Government Technology Leadership Award were named in her honor.
- 2009: The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center named its flagship system "Hopper".
- 2009: Office of Naval Intelligence creates the Grace Hopper Information Services Center.
- 2013: Google made the Google Doodle for Hopper's 107th birthday an animation of her sitting at a computer, using COBOL to print out her age. At the end of the animation, a moth flies out of the computer.
- 2016: On November 22, 2016, Hopper was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her accomplishments in the field of computer science.
- 2017: Hopper College at Yale University was named in her honor.
- 2021: The Admiral Grace Hopper Award was established by the chancellor of the College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC) of the National Defense University to recognize leaders in the fields of information and cybersecurity throughout the National Security community.
Legacy
Places
- Grace Hopper Avenue in Monterey, California, is the location of the Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center as well as the National Weather Service's San Francisco Bay Area forecast office.
- Grace M. Hopper Navy Regional Data Automation Center at Naval Air Station, North Island, California.
- Grace Murray Hopper Park, located on South Joyce Street in Arlington County, Virginia, is a small memorial park in front of her former residence (River House Apartments) and is now owned by Arlington County, Virginia.
- Brewster Academy, a school located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, United States, dedicated their computer lab to her in 1985, calling it the Grace Murray Hopper Center for Computer Learning. The academy bestows a Grace Murray Hopper Prize to a graduate who excelled in the field of computer systems. Hopper had spent her childhood summers at a family home in Wolfeboro.
- Grace Hopper College, one of the residential colleges of Yale University.
- An administration building on Naval Support Activity Annapolis (previously known as Naval Station Annapolis) in Annapolis, Maryland is named the Grace Hopper Building in her honor.
- Hopper Hall is Naval Academy’s newest academic building that houses its cyber science department, among others. It is the first building at any service academy named after a woman.
- The US Naval Academy also owns a Cray XC-30 supercomputer named "Grace," hosted at the University of Maryland-College Park.
- Building 1482 aboard Naval Air Station North Island, housing the Naval Computer and Telecommunication Station San Diego, is named the Grace Hopper Building, and also contains the History of Naval Communications Museum.
- Building 6007, C2/CNT West in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is named after her.
- The street outside of the Nathan Deal Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta, Georgia, is named Grace Hopper Lane.
- Grace Hopper Academy is a for-profit immersive programming school in New York City named in Grace Hopper's honor. It opened in January 2016 with the goal of increasing the proportion of women in software engineering careers.
- A bridge over Goose Creek, to join the north and south sides of the Naval Support Activity Charleston side of Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, is named the Grace Hopper Memorial Bridge in her honor.
- Minor planet 5773 Hopper discovered by Eleanor Helin is named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 November 2019 (M.P.C. 117229).
- Grace Hopper Hall, a community meeting hall in Orlando, Florida (located on the site of the former Orlando Naval Training Center) is named for her.
- The United States Naval Academy dedicated Hopper Hall, their cyber, computer science, and computer engineering building, to RDML Hopper in 2020, and it opened to midshipmen in the spring of 2021.
Programs
- Women at Microsoft Corporation formed an employee group called Hoppers and established a scholarship in her honor.
- Beginning in 2015, one of the nine competition fields at the FIRST Robotics Competition world championship is named for Hopper.
- A named professorship in the Department of Computer Sciences was established at Yale University in her honor. Joan Feigenbaum was named to this chair in 2008.
- In 2020, Google named its new undersea network cable 'Grace Hopper'. The cable will connect the US, UK and Spain and is estimated to be completed by 2022.
See also
- Bug (engineering)#History
- Code: Debugging the Gender Gap
- List of pioneers in computer science
- Futures techniques
- Systems engineering
- Women in computing
- Hopper (microarchitecture)
- Women in the United States Navy
- List of female United States military generals and flag officers
- Timeline of women in science
