Grace Hopper
Remember the COBOL programming language? Recall what the acronym stands for? “Common Business Oriented Language” You may then also recall one of the true-but-forgotten leaders of the computer age: Grace Brewster Murray Hopper
Known to her colleagues and subordinates as “Amazing Grace,” Hopper’s record of achievement is amazing. Here are just a few high points, as recounted in The Book of Woman’s Firsts:
- First woman to develop operating programs for the Mark I, an early automatically sequenced digital computer (circa 1945).
- First to develop the concept of automatic programming (1951) that led to COBOL.
- First person to receive the computer sciences “Man of the Year” award (1969).
- First to receive, as an individual, the U.S. Medal of Technology, awarded by President Bush in 1991.
Born in 1906, Hopper’s earliest computer work came during World War II, after she enlisted in the U.S. Navy. A graduate of Vassar College with master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale, she retained her naval reserve status after the war while on the staff at Harvard’s applied physics computational laboratory. In 1966, she was recalled to the Navy to become a commander to supervise standardization of its computer languages and programs. And in 1973, she became the first woman to be promoted to captain in the Navy while on the retired reserved list. In 1983, President Reagan appointed her rear admiral.
Hopper was the oldest officer on active duty in all of the armed services when she retired from the Navy at the age of 80. After her retirement, she became a senior consultant to the Digital Equipment Corporation, a position she held until her death in 1992.
What lesson can engineers and others learn from the amazing career of Grace Hopper? Shun stereotyping. The success of the youthful, slightly rebellious, mostly male icons of the computer age, while remarkable, can fool us. The computer revolution has come upon us and advanced so quickly that we tend to think only of today’s personal computer guru’s like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as the early pioneers, working in isolation in out-of-the-way garages.
The impressive biography of Grace Brewster Murray Hopper provides an excellent example in the fallacy in stereotypical thinking. Without her and her lifetime of effort and accomplishment, all in a very traditional service, Microsoft might just be a strange word, and Macintosh Apples merely fruit.
The Anita Borg Institute for Woman and Technology organizes the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) Of Women In Computing Conference. This conference is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. It is the largest technical conference for women in computing and results in collaborative proposals, networking and mentoring for junior women and increased visibility for the contributions of women in computing. Conference presenters are leaders in their respective fields, representing industry, academia and government. Top researchers present their work while special sessions focus on the role of women in today’s technology fields.
