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Birth
Grace Brewster Murray was born to Walter Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne in New York City. Her father owned an insurance company and she was educated in private schools. -
Vassar College
Grace Murray graduated from Vassar College in 1928 as a member of Phi Phi Betta Kappa with BA in Physics and Mathematics. -
Masters Degree from Yale
In 1930, Grace Murray completed her master's degree at Yale University. -
Marriage
Grace Brewster Murray married Vincent Hopper in 1930 and became Grace Hopper. Vincent Hopper was an English Professor at NYU. -
PhD
Hopper completed her dissertation “New Types of Irreducibility Criteria” and graduated from Yale University with a PhD in Mathematics. She was one of the first few women to earn this kind of degree. -
Joins the Navy
Hopper was inspired to join the Navy at the beginning of WWII. -
Appointed to Junior Grade Lieutenant
Grace Hopper was appointed to junior grade lieutenant after graduating top of her class at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College. -
Mark I Project
Because of her mathematical background, Hopper was given an assignment for the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, where she learned to program a Mark I computer. -
Coined the terms "bug" and "debugging"
While working on the Mark II, Hopper and her colleagues encountered a problem. Hopper coined the terms "bug" and "debugging" because she was the first too refer to a computer problem as a “bug” and to speak of “debugging” a computer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=lQS0hDqpVLE&feature=emb_logo -
UNIVAC
Hopper moved into the private industry and joined Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician. She oversaw programming for the UNIVAC computer. -
A-0
Grace Hopper and her team built the first compiler for computer languages called A-0. A compiler renders worded instructions into code that can be read by computers. This compiler was a crucial step toward the invention of modern programming languages. -
Contribution to COBOL
Hopper participated in the two day CODASYL conference with experts from the industry and the government. They consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. -
Retired from Naval Reserve
Grace Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve in 1966, but her pioneering computer work meant that she was recalled to active duty. -
COBOL
A standardized version of COBOL was approved by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for commercial use. -
Retired from the Navy
After a career that spanned more than 42 years, Hopper retired from the Navy in August of 1986 with the rank of Rear Admiral. At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the United States Navy. -
Awarded the National Medal of Technology
President George Bush awarded Grace Hopper the National Medal of Technology, the nation’s highest technology award. She was the first woman to receive this honor. -
Death
At the age of 85, Grace Hopper died in Arlington, Virginia, on January 1, 1992. She passed away peacefully in her sleep.
