Grace Hopper was born on December 9, 1906, in New York City.
She attended Vassar College where she studied math as well as physics.
She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1928.
Hopper then attended Yale, where earned a master’s degree in mathematics in 1930 and
a Ph.D. in 1934.
She was one of the first women in the United States to earn her doctorate degree.
Beginning in 1931, she taught mathematics at Vassar College, and continued teaching
there until the United States entered World War II.
In 1943, Hopper joined the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service)
and was commissioned as a Lieutenant (Junior Grade) in the Naval Reserve.
Hopper was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University.
It was during this time that she worked on the first large-scale calculator, the Mark
I, which was a precursor of modern electronic computers.
In 1946, Hopper wrote the first computer manual, which described how to operate the Mark I,
as well as how to program a computer.
This was the beginning chapter of Hopper’s brilliance in the realm of computers.
In 1949, Hopper joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation.
While working there, she designed one of the first compilers, which translates a programmer’s
instructions into codes.
She was the first person to coin the word “compiler.”
Hopper eventually became the head programmer during the design phase of UNIVAC I,
which was the first general purpose computer designed for business applications.
Hopper continued her work in computers with the Rand Corporation through the 1950s and 1960s.
Hopper retired from the Navy in 1966 as a Commander.
In 1967, Hopper was recalled to active duty to assist the Navy with standardizing computer languages.
In 1983 Hopper was promoted to Commodore and then to Rear Admiral in 1985.
In 1986, at the age of 79, she retired as the oldest active-duty officer serving in
the Navy.
For her groundbreaking work in computers, Hopper was recognized both nationally and
internationally.
In 1971, the Association for Computing Machinery established the Grace Murray Hopper Award
for Outstanding Young Computer Professionals. In 1973, Hopper was named a distinguished
fellow of the British Computer Society, making her the first and only woman to hold the title.
Despite the many accolades and awards for her outstanding work, Hopper remained humble.
After receiving the National Medal of Technology in 1991, Hopper said, “If you ask me what
accomplishment I’m most proud of, the answer would be all the young people I’ve trained
over the years; that’s more important than writing the first compiler.”
Grace Hopper died on January 1, 1992 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
To honor Admiral Hopper, the Navy commissioned the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Hopper
(DDG-70) on September 6, 1997.
In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Grace Hopper the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.
Referring to Grace Hopper, President Obama said, "If Wright is flight, and Edison is
light, then Hopper is code."