GRACE HOPPER(DECEMBER 9, 1906 – JANUARY 1, 1992)

Nov 2014

SPOTLIGHT

ON

”Amazing Grace”

ACCOMPLISHMENTS 1934 - First woman to graduate from Yale with a PhD in Mathematics.

1943 - Joins the Navy as an officer after President Roosevelt authorizes the

formation of the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency

Service.

1944-1945 Lieutenant Grace Hopper serves as operational head of the first

computer during WWII, the Harvard Mark I.

1944 - Works with mathematician John von Neumann to solve the famous

implosion problem for the Nuclear bomb.

1949 - Joins Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp, the first computer start-up company.

1951 - Invents the compiler, the cornerstone of all high end programming

languages.

1953 Named director of automatic programming for the first commercial computer,

UNIVAC.

1959 Influential in the creation of COBOL –which becomes the most successful

computer language to date and accounts for 70% of active code.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS 1967 to 1977 - Director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's

Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of captain in

1973. She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a

COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy.

1986 - Retired from the Navy on August 14, 1986. At a celebration held in Boston

on the USS Constitution, Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service

Medal , the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.

At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer

in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days).

1986 - Senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corp., a position she retained until

her death in 1992, aged 85.

HONORS 1969 - Hopper was awarded the inaugural Computer Sciences Man of the Year

award from the Data Processing Management Association

1971 - The annual Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer

Professionals was established in 1971 by the Association for Computing

Machinery

1973 - First person from the United States and the first woman of any nationality to

be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.

1982 - Received the AAUW Achievement Award

1985 - Received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Western New England

College (now Western New England University)

1986 – Upon retirement she received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal

1987 - Becomes a Computer History Museum Fellow Award Recipient

1988 - Received the Golden Gavel Award at the Toastmasters International

convention in Washington, DC.

HONORS 1991 - First female recipient of the National Medal of Technology

"For her pioneering accomplishments in the development of computer

programming languages that simplified computer technology and opened the

door to a significantly larger universe of users."

1991 - Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

1996 - USS Hopper (DDG-70) was launched. Nicknamed Amazing Grace, it is

on a very short list of U.S. military vessels named after women

2001 - The Gracies, the Government Technology Leadership Award were named

in her honor

2009 - The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific

Computing Center named its flagship system "Hopper”

2009 - Office of Naval Intelligence creates the Grace Hopper Information

Services Center

2013 - Google Doodle animation for Hopper's 107th birthday with her sitting at

a computer, using COBOL to print out her age where a moth flies out of the

computer at the end

Awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities worldwide in her lifetime

QUOTE

The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, "Try it." And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances.