Grace Hopper (1906-1992) was a computer pioneer and naval officer who advocated for computer accessibility.
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Known as the Queen of Code, today’s STEMinist was a computer pioneer and naval officer. As one of the first modern programmers, she was an advocate for computer accessibility, dedicating much of her life to see just how far computers could advance, and how many people could learn to use them along the way.
Let’s talk about Grace Hopper.
Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City, in 1906. Her father, Walter, owned an insurance company, and the family enjoyed the trappings of the East Coast upper class -- summers in New Hampshire, and private school for Grace.
Grace came of age during an unusual time in American history. During the 1920s and 30s, a relatively high number of women were receiving doctorate degrees -- numbers that wouldn’t be matched again until the 1980s. This period of opportunity was immediately followed by World War II, which ushered huge numbers of women into the workforce.
In 1928, Grace graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College, with degrees in mathematics and physics. Two years later, she earned a master’s degree in mathematics from Yale. Grace then began teaching math at Vassar, while studying for her Ph.D under computer pioneer Howard Engstrom.
In 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed. The attack, in which 350 Japanese war planes swarmed a Hawaiian naval base, drew the U.S. into World War II. It also inspired Grace to join the war effort.
Despite her unique set of skills, she was initially rejected from the Navy due to her age and small stature. But Grace, brilliant and sharp-tongued, persisted. In 1943, she joined the Naval Reserve and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University.
At Harvard, Grace worked with Howard Aiken, who had developed one of the first earliest electromechanical computers: the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Better known as Mark I.
Grace was responsible for programming Mark I -- which took up an entire room -- and punching machine instructions into the tape. Before there was even much understanding around what this job entailed, Grace became one of the first three computer programmers in American history. She also wrote Mark I’s 561-page user manual.
Over the next few years, U.S. military intelligence and early computer science evolved together, and Grace was at the heart of it all.
While at Harvard, Grace and her peers developed top-secret calculations that were essential to the war effort. Rocket trajectory computations, calibrating minesweepers, creating range tables for new anti-aircraft guns. Their team also ran numbers for John von Neumann, who developed the plutonium bomb that eventually dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
After the war, Grace remained at Harvard, becoming a research fellow in engineering sciences and applied physics. With continued funding from the Navy, Grace helped develop Mark II and Mark III. One night in 1945, the Mark II encountered a mysterious problem. They took the machine apart and found a large moth inside. Grace remarked in the moment that they were “debugging” the computer, a phrase that continues to enjoy a well-worn spot in the lexicon.
In 1946, Grace applied for regular commission from the Navy. When she was denied the position because of her age, she left active duty service. When it became clear she would not be promoted or granted tenure, she left Harvard, too.
In 1949, Grace was hired as a senior mathematician for the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, which was soon bought by Remington Rand. Grace became their head programmer.
In 1952, Grace’s team developed the first “computer language compiler,” called A-0. The compiler could automatically translate mathematical code into machine-readable binary code. This made it possible for programmers like Grace to write programs that worked for multiple computers, rather than single machines.
Next, her team created Flow-Matic, the first programming language to use English words rather than mathematical symbols. Grace knew that while she was comfortable stringing together pages and pages of number-based code, most people weren’t. Her goal was to make computers accessible to as many folks as possible.
As more programmers, and more computers, entered the tech landscape, the need for a standardized computer programming language became increasingly urgent. So in 1959, COBOL, short for “common business-oriented language,” debuted. While many people contributed to COBOL, which became the first standardized business computer language, Grace was arguably its biggest champion, pushing for its adoption among both military and private-sector users. She developed compilers for COBOL. And by the 1970s, it was the most widely used programming language in the world.
Though Grace had left active duty back in 1946, she’d remained a Navy Reservist. In 1966, age restrictions forced her to retire as a commander. She later called it the saddest day of her life. But just 7 months later, Grace was called back up -- this time, to standardize the Navy’s multiple programming languages, while they increased operations in Southeast Asia. “Amazing Grace,” as her subordinates called her, remained on active duty for the next 19 years.
When she finally retired as a rear admiral, at the age of 79, Grace was the oldest serving officer in the U.S. armed forces.
Towards the end of her life, Grace received a number of accolades, including more than 40 honorary degrees. Many scholarships, professorships, awards, and even a guided missile destroyer bear her name. In 2016, President Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died on January 1st, 1992. She was 85 years old.
Despite all the awards, and the degrees, and the recognition, Grace remained steadfast in her larger goal. In accepting the National Medal of Technology, she once said, “If you ask me the 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.”
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