Grace Hopper

1. Basics

1.1. Born December 9, 1906

1.2. Died January 1, 1992

1.3. Enlisted in the Navy Reserves twice. First in 1943 from which she retired in 1966, but was recalled in 1967 and served until 1986.

2. Education

2.1. Attended Hartridge Prepatory school until the age of 17

2.2. Originally applied to Vassar at age 16, but was not fluent enough in Latin, she was admitted after she turned 17.

2.3. She earned her Bachelor's in Math and Physics from Vassar in 1928.

2.4. She earned her Masters from Yale in 1930, and her Doctorate's in 1934.

3. Career

3.1. She began teaching Mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1941

3.2. In 1943, she Obtained a leave of absence from Vassar to enlist in the Naval Reserve and in 1944, was assigned to the Computation Project at Harvard University. She remained until 1949, turning down an offer from Vassar to become a full professor.

3.3. In 1949, she was hired by the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, where she served as the UNIVAC director of Automatic Programming Developement.

4. Achievements

4.1. While working at Ecker-Mauchly, she hit upon the idea that she could program a computer to read English and translate it into computer code.

4.1.1. It was not until 1952 that her ideas were accepted.

4.2. In 1954, as the Director of Automatic Programming, her department released the first compiler-based programming languages. MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC

4.3. In 1959, she served as a technical consultant at a two-day conference known as the Conference of Data System Languages. the result of this conference was the COBOL programming language, which is still in use today.

5. Awards

5.1. She was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal upon her final retirement from the Navy. This is the highest award that a non-combatant can be awarded by the Department of Defense

5.2. In 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the highest honors that the president can bestow upon a non-combatant.

5.3. Through Congressional action and Presidential appointment, she was awarded the rank of commodore, which was changed to Rear Admiral (lower half) in 1985. This made her the first female Admiral, as well as the oldest serving fleet officer in the navy.

6. Fun Tidbits

6.1. Upon her retirement, she was the oldest and longest serving officer in Naval History, beaten only by two fleet admirals who served for life because of their ranks, and she served aboard the oldest ship still active in the Navy.

6.2. Both the USS Hopper and the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer are named in her honor.