Her curiosity, which began with disassembling an alarm clock at the age of seven, continued into her work and achievements in the history of computer science. Thus, we have written the biography of Grace Hopper, one of the women whose name is written in history, for those who are curious.
Her full name is Grace Brewster Murray, she was born on December 9, 1906 in New York City. Her father is Walter Fletcher Murray and her mother is Mary Campbell Van Horne. She was the eldest of three children to parents of Scottish and Dutch descent.
Very inquisitive and intelligent as a child, Grace decided at the age of seven to figure out how the alarm clock works. That's why she managed to disassemble seven alarm clocks before her mother knew what she was doing. Enrolled for her prep school education at Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey, Grace was accepted into Vassar College at the age of 17. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar with a bachelor's degree in 1928, Grace earned her master's degree from Yale University in 1930.
In 1930, she married New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper. The couple divorced in 1945, and Grace continued to take the surname of her divorced husband, although she never remarried. In 1934, Grace received her doctorate in mathematics from Yale University and published her thesis, "The New Kind of Irreducibility Criteria," that same year. Beginning to teach mathematics at Vassar in 1931, Grace was promoted to associate professor in 1941.
Grace tried to join the Navy early in World War II, but ended up being rejected. At 34, Grace was too old to enlist and her weight-to-height ratio was too low. Her request to join the Navy was also presumed to have been rejected on the grounds that her post as mathematician and professor of mathematics at Vassar College was valuable to the war. Taking leave from college during the war in 1943, Grace was sworn into the Naval Reserve, becoming one of many women who volunteered to serve with WAVES.
Having to get an exemption to join the Army, Grace weighed less than the Navy's minimum. She was educated at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College, Massachusetts. Graduating top of her class in 1944, Grace was appointed a lieutenant in the Bureau of Ships Computing Project at Harvard University and served on the "Mark I" computer programming team headed by Howard H.Aiken. Grace and Aiken wrote three papers for this computer programming, also known as the "Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator".
Grace's request to be transferred to the regular Navy at the end of the war was not accepted because she was 38 years old. Continuing to serve in the Naval Reserve, Grace remained at Harvard University until 1949. Around this time, she did not accept her full professorship at Vassar to work as a research fellow at Harvard under a Navy contract, she. She later left Harvard due to the lack of a permanent position for women.
In 1949, as a senior mathematician, Grace joined the team that developed the "UNIVAC I" as an employee of the 'Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation'. She also served as director of "UNIVAC Automated Programming Development" for 'Remington Rand' she. The "UNIVAC", the first known large-scale electronic computer commercially available in 1950, was more competitive in information processing than the "Mark I".
When Grace recommended the development of a new programming language that would use purely English words, she 'said they couldn't do it because computers didn't understand English' but she continued to insist. Grace's idea can be expressed as "computers write their programs in English and computers translate them into machine code". Grace, whose idea was not accepted for three years, published the "compilers" in 1952, her first article on the subject. In the early 1950s, the firm was taken over by the Remington Rand company, and the first original compiler job was done while working for them. It was also known as Program A compiler and its first version was A-0.
That same year it had an operational link loader, which was then referred to as the compiler. Later, Grace, who said no one believed it, added that they told me computers could only do arithmetic. In 1954, she was named the company's first director of automatic programming. Her team released some of the first compiler-based programming languages. Among them; There are MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC.
Grace said her compiler, the A-0 system, "translated mathematical notation into machine code." Then she continued; "Very few people can truly be symbol manipulators. For many people it is much easier to write an expression in English than to use symbols. Therefore, I decided that data processors should be able to write their programs in English and computers should translate them into machine code." This marked the beginning of "COBOL", a computer language used today for data processors.
In 1959, computer experts were brought together at conference known as the Data Systems Languages Conference (CODASYL). Grace served on the committee as a technical advisor, and many of her former employees were on the short-term committee that defined the new COBOL language (short for COMmon Business-Oriented Language). Grace's idea that programs should be written in a language close to English caught on in the new business language, and COBOL remains the most common business language to this day. Among the members of the committee working on COBOL was Jean E. Sammet.
From 1967 to 1977, Grace continued to work as director of the Naval Programming Languages Group. In 1973, Grace developed verification software for and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization for the navy.
In the 1970s, Grace advocated "DoD's idea of replacing large, centralized systems with small, distributed computer networks." Any user on any computer node could access public databases located on the network. Additionally, she worked on the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components. She did this too, especially for early programming languages like FORTRAN and COBOL. In the 1980s, these tests and their official administration were undertaken by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), today known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Under Navy attrition ordinance, Grace retired from the Naval Reserve at the end of 1966 with the rank of commander. She was recalled to active duty in August 1967, which turned into indefinite duty for a period of six months. Retiring again in 1971, Grace was asked to return to active duty again in 1972. In 1972, she won Yale University's "Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal", awarded to outstanding graduates. In 1973, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. was promoted to captain. That same year, she went on to make her name known as the first woman and the first American to become a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
Republican Representative Philip Crane defended a joint resolution from the House of Representatives after seeing Grace in an episode of the TV news magazine "60 Minutes" in March 1983. This led to Grace being promoted to commodore with special appointment to President on December 15, 1983. From November 8, 1985, her rank of commodore was renamed "rear admiral" (lower half), making Grace one of the few female admirals of the Navy.
Retiring from the Navy on August 14, 1986, Rear Admiral Grace had a career of over 42 years. At the time, Grace, the oldest serving member of the Navy, was honored with the "Defense Distinguished Service Medal," the highest non-combat honor awarded by the Department of Defense, at a celebration to commemorate her retirement. In 1991, she received the country's highest technology award as an individual for her contributions and work in computer technology.
Serving 79 years, eight months, and five days at the time of her retirement, Grace became the oldest active-duty officer in the United States Navy. At the same time, she had her retirement ceremony aboard the oldest serving ship in the United States Navy. Admiral Grace was the first person to be profiled twice in the TV news magazine "60 Minutes", once in March 1983 and again on August 24, 1986.
After her retirement, she took a job as a senior consultant to "Digital Equipment Corporation" (DEC). Primarily a goodwill ambassador at DEC, Grace has lectured widely about her career and the efforts computer vendors can make to make the lives of their users easier. Despite her retirement, she always wore the Navy uniform during these lessons.
Grace, who remained in this position until she died in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Virginia on New Year's Day in 1992, was 85 years old. She was interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. In 2016, Grace was awarded the "Presidential Medal of Freedom", the nation's highest civilian honor, for her outstanding contribution to the field of computer science.
While working on a "Mark II" computer at Harvard University in 1947, her friends discovered a moth that was preventing the computer from working. On top of their stickers, they affixed the moth onto a diary page for that day with the note "First true case of bug found." The case was considered a historical example of "debugging" a computer. Grace is credited with popularizing the term in computing. The term "bug" for a malfunction was used in various fields before it was applied to computers. Hopper is also famous for his "nanosecond" visual aid.
A character who likes to take risks and push luck, Grace was known as someone who loved to believe in people and support their potential. She is remembered not only for her contributions to computer science, but also for her teaching personality. Additionally, she is counted as one of the three pioneers of modern computer science. Today she is known as "Admiral of the Cybersea" or "Amazing Grace".
Dedicating her life to science and informatics and breaking new ground with her work, Grace Hopper has always been a pioneer and exemplary name as one of the most successful women who have lived throughout history, as well as the numerous awards and titles she has received throughout her life.