Hopper 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
Dutch and
Scottish descent, and attended
West End Collegiate Church.[12] Her great-grandfather, Alexander Wilson Russell, an admiral in the US Navy, fought in the
Battle of Mobile Bay during the
Civil War.
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).[13] For her
preparatory school education, she attended the
Hartridge School in
Plainfield, New Jersey. Hopper was initially rejected for early admission to
Vassar College at age 16 (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, she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale[14] under the direction of
Øystein Ore.[15][16] Her
dissertation, New Types of Irreducibility Criteria, was published that same year.[17] Hopper began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.[18]
She was married to
New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906–76) from 1930 until their divorce in 1945.[15][19] She did not marry again, but chose to retain his surname.
Career
World War II
Hopper's signatures on a duty officer signup sheet for the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard, which built and operated the Mark I
Hopper had tried to enlist in the Navy early in the war. She was at age 34, too old to enlist, and her weight to height ratio was too low. She was also denied on the basis that her job as a mathematician—she was a mathematics professor at Vassar College—was valuable to the war effort.[20] During
World War II in 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the
United States Navy Reserve, one of many women to volunteer to serve in the
WAVES. She had to get an exemption to enlist; she was 15 pounds (6.8 kg) below the Navy minimum weight of 120 pounds (54 kg). She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at
Smith College in
Northampton, Massachusetts. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the
Bureau of Ships Computation Project at
Harvard University as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the
Mark I computer programming staff headed by
Howard H. Aiken. Hopper and Aiken coauthored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her advanced age of 38. She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. 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.[21]
UNIVAC
In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the
Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the
UNIVAC I.[18] When she recommended that a new programming language be developed using entirely English words, she "was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do this because computers didn't understand English." This idea was not accepted for 3 years, and she published her first paper on the subject, compilers, in 1952. In the early 1950s, the company was taken over by the
Remington Rand corporation, and it was while she was working for them that her original
compiler work was done. The compiler was known as the A compiler and its first version was
A-0.[22]: 11
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."[23]
In 1954 Hopper was named the company's first director of automatic programming, and her department released some of the first compiler-based programming languages, including
MATH-MATIC and
FLOW-MATIC.[18]
In the spring of 1959, computer experts from industry and government were brought together in a two-day conference known as the Conference on Data Systems Languages (
CODASYL). Hopper served as a technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language
COBOL (an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language). 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 (rather than in
machine code or in languages close to machine code, such as
assembly languages) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL went on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date.[24]
From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of
Captain in 1973.[21] She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy.[21]
Standards
In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases located on the network.[22]: 119 She developed the implementation of
standards for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early
programming languages such as
FORTRAN and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Retirement
Hopper being promoted to the rank of commodore in 1983
In accordance with Navy attrition regulations, Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of
Commander at age 60 at the end of 1966.[25] She was recalled to active duty in August 1967 for a six-month period that turned into an indefinite assignment. She again retired in 1971, but was again asked to return to active duty in 1972. She was promoted to
Captain in 1973 by
AdmiralElmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.[26]
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.[26][27][28][29] She remained on active duty for several years beyond mandatory retirement by special approval of Congress.[30] 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 commemorate her retirement, Hopper was awarded the
Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense. 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 aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days).[31] (Admirals
William D. Leahy,
Chester W. Nimitz,
Hyman G. Rickover and
Charles Stewart were the only other officers in the Navy's history to serve on active duty at a higher age. Leahy and Nimitz served on active duty for life due to their promotions to the rank of
Fleet Admiral.)
She was then hired as a senior consultant to
Digital Equipment Corporation, a position she retained until her death in 1992, aged 85.
Her primary activity in this capacity was as a goodwill ambassador, lecturing widely on the early days of computers, 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. She often recounted that during her service she was frequently asked by Admirals and Generals why satellite communication would take so long. 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 '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.[32]
Death
Hopper died in her sleep of natural causes on New Year's Day 1992 at her home in Arlington, Virginia; she was 85 years of age. She was interred with full military honors in
Arlington National Cemetery.[33]
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.”.[34]
1986: Upon her retirement, she received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal.
1987: The first
Computer History Museum Fellow Award Recipient "for contributions to the development of programming languages, for standardization efforts, and for lifelong naval service."[39]
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.[44][45]
2016: On November 22, 2016 Hopper was posthumously awarded a
Presidential Medal of Freedom for her accomplishments in the field of computer science.[46]
Recognition
On February 11, 2017
Yale University announced its intent to rename
Calhoun College, one of its twelve undergraduate residential colleges, after Hopper following years of controversy about its previous namesake
John C. Calhoun. Hopper was a graduate of Yale University, receiving an M.A. in 1930 and a Ph.D in 1934.
The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is a convention for Women in the field of Computer Science and Technology. It is named after Hopper to honor her for her work and influence in the field of computing, and her push for more women to enter and stay in the tech field. It features a wide array of educational and professional development courses and workshops, including a lesson on compilers, which Hopper invented and Pioneered, and a career fair, in order to help connect women in the computing field with potential employers.
Women at
Microsoft Corporation formed an employee group called Hoppers and established a scholarship in her honor. Hoppers has over 3000 members worldwide.
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.[26] The academy bestows a Grace Murray Hopper Prize to a graduate who excelled in the field of computer systems.[47] Hopper had spent her childhood summers at a family home in Wolfeboro.
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.[26]
Vice Admiral Walter E. "Ted" Carter announced on 8 September 2016 at the Athena Conference that the
Naval Academy's newest Cyber Operations building would be named Hopper Hall after Admiral Grace Hopper. This is the first building at any service academy named after a woman. In his words, "Grace Hopper was the admiral of the Cyber Seas."
The US Naval Academy also owns a Cray XC-30 supercomputer named "Grace," hosted at the University of Maryland-College Park.[48]
Building 1482 aboard
Naval Air Station North Island, housing the Naval Computer and Telecommunication Station San Diego, is named the Grace Hopper Building.
Building 6007, C2/CNT West, Command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or
C4ISR, Center of Excellence in
Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland is named the Rear Admiral Grace Hopper Building.
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.[49]
Grace Hopper's legacy was an inspiring factor in the creation of the
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.[50] Held yearly, this conference is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.
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.[51][52]
Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL".
While she was working on a
Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a
moth stuck in a
relay impeding its operation. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging", perhaps the first in history. The term bug had been in use for many years in engineering.[59][60] The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the
Smithsonian Institution's
National Museum of American History in
Washington, D.C.[61]
Grace Hopper is famous 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 (11.80 inches)—the distance that light travels in one
nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the
metonym "nanoseconds."[29] She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed 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 nearly a thousand feet 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.
Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be "'all Navy', but when you reach inside, you find a 'Pirate' dying to be released".[62]
^Richard L. Wexelblat, ed. (1981). History of Programming Languages. New York: Academic Press.
ISBN0-12-745040-8. {{
cite book}}: |author= has generic name (
help)
^Donald D. Spencer (1985). Computers and Information Processing. C.E. Merrill Publishing Co.
ISBN978-0-675-20290-9.
^Phillip A. Laplante (2001). Dictionary of computer science, engineering, and technology. CRC Press.
ISBN978-0-8493-2691-2.
^Bryan H. Bunch, Alexander Hellemans (1993). The Timetables of Technology: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Technology. Simon & Schuster.
ISBN978-0-671-76918-5.
^Bernhelm Booss-Bavnbek, Jens Høyrup (2003). Mathematics and War. Birkhäuser Verlag.
ISBN978-3-7643-1634-1.
^Though some books, including Kurt Beyer's Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, reported that Hopper was the first woman to earn a Yale PhD in mathematics, the first of ten women prior to 1934 was Charlotte Cynthia Barnum (1860–1934). Murray, Margaret A. M. (May–June 2010). "The first lady of math?". Yale Alumni Magazine. Vol. 73, no. 5. pp. 5–6.
ISSN0044-0051.
^"Prof. Vincent Hopper of N.Y.U., Literature Teacher, Dead at 69". The New York Times. January 21, 1976.
^"Grace Hopper". www.thocp.net. Retrieved December 12, 2016.
^
abcWilliams, Kathleen Broome (2001). Improbable Warriors: Women Scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press.
ISBN978-1-55750-961-1.
^"Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, USNR, (1906–1992) Informal Images taken during the 1980s". Biographies in Naval History. United States Navy Naval Historical Center. Retrieved July 2, 2013. Commodore Grace M. Hopper, USNR. receives congratulations from President Ronald Reagan, following her promotion from the rank of Captain to Commodore in ceremonies at the White House, 15 December 1983
^"Historic Images of Ronald Reagan". U.S. Defense Department. Archived from
the original on October 19, 2013. Retrieved March 7, 2016. President Ronald Reagan greets Navy Capt. Grace Hopper as she arrives at the White House for her promotion to Commodore, Dec. 15, 1983. Hopper was a computer technology pioneer.
^
ab"Late Night with David Letterman".
Late Night with David Letterman. Season 5. Episode 771. New York City. October 2, 1986.
NBC. "[to President Ronald Reagan on her promotion] Sir ... I'm older than you are ... YouTube title: Grace Hopper on Letterman{{
cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |serieslink= ignored (|series-link= suggested) (
help)
^Gilbert, Lynn (December 10, 2012). Particular Passions: Grace Murray Hopper. Women of Wisdom Series (1st ed.). New York City: Lynn Gilbert Inc.
ISBN978-1-61979-403-0.
^Edison to Puskas, November 13, 1878, Edison papers, Edison National Laboratory, U.S. National Park Service, West Orange, N.J., cited in Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A History of the American Genius for Invention, Penguin Books, 1989,
ISBN0-14-009741-4, on page 75.
^Elliott, Jay; Simon, William L. (2011). The Steve Jobs way: iLeadership for a new generation. Philadelphia: Vanguard. p. 71.
ISBN978-1-59315-639-8.
Further reading
Beyer, Kurt W. (September 30, 2009). Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (1st ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
ISBN978-0-262-01310-9.
Marx, Christy (August 2003). Grace Hopper: the first woman to program the first computer in the United States. Women hall of famers in mathematics and science (1st ed.). New York City: Rosen Publishing Group.
ISBN978-0-8239-3877-3.
Williams, Kathleen Broome (November 15, 2004). Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea (1st ed.). Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press.
ISBN978-1-55750-952-9.
Williams, Kathleen Broome (2001). Improbable Warriors: Women Scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press.
ISBN978-1-55750-961-1. Williams' book focuses on the lives and contributions of four notable women scientists:
Mary Sears (1905–1997);
Florence van Straten (1913–1992); Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992);
Mina Spiegel Rees (1902–1997).