Grace Hopper
- A Girl Like You Project
- Jun 7, 2023
- 1 min read
Photo: James S. Davis/U.S. Department of Defense
Grace Hopper was born December 9, 1906, in New York, New York. She was a mathematician and rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. She helped pioneer computer technology development. She helped create UNIVAC I, the first commercial electronic computer.
In 1944, she was part of the Bureau of Ordnance's Computation Project at Harvard. During this time, she worked on Mark I, an early protocomputer. Mark I is credited with the development of the first fully automatic large scale calculator.
In 1957, she helped develop Flow-Matic, the first English-language data-processing compiler. Many features of Flow-Matic assisted in the development of COBOL. COBOL is a high-level computer programming language, commonly used in the business industry. It was Hopper's development of compliers for COBOL and her advocacy for its use, that led to its popularity in the 1960s.
Hopper was recognized by the Data Processing Management Association when she was named the first computer science Man of the Year. In 1991, she was awarded the National Medal of Technology. Posthumously, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
Sources:
Comments