Hopper was also awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award possible by the Department of Defense. She had reached the rank of Rear Admiral, being promoted to the rank of Commodore in a White House ceremony in December 1983, then becoming Rear Admiral Hopper in 1985. She was involved both with the academic world and with the Navy until she retired from the Navy in 1986, at 80 years of age (the oldest active duty officer in the United States). Hopper was never one to hold a single job at any one time. Thinking about how computers have developed, one sees the rather remarkable vision that Hopper had of how computers would become such an important tool for mathematicians. They told me computers could only do arithmetic." "I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. In 1951, Hopper discovered the first computer "bug." It was a real moth, which she pasted into her logbook. By the end of the war, Hopper was working on the Harvard Mark II computer. Hopper became the third person to program the Mark I. From 1944 she worked on the Harvard Mark I computer. Yet, she was determined to join the Navy and, despite being told that she could serve her country best by remaining in her teaching post at Vassar College, she eventually persuaded the Naval Reserve to accept her in 1943.Īfter initial training at Midshipman's School, after which she was commissioned a Lieutenant, Hopper was assigned to the Cruft Laboratories at Harvard University. However she was too old (at 34!) to enlist and as a mathematics professor was considered essential to the war effort. Hopper wanted to join the military as soon as the United States entered World War II. Hopper was awarded her doctorate by Yale University in 1934 for a thesis New Types of Irreducibility Criteria. A Vassar College Fellowship allowed her to study at Yale University and, also in 1930, Yale awarded her an MA. In 1930 Grace Murray married Vincent Foster Hopper, an English teacher from New York University. After graduating she undertook research in mathematics at Yale University. Hopper studied mathematics and physics at Vassar College graduating with a BA in 1928. Unable to reassemble it, she took to pieces the other seven clocks she found in the house before her mother discovered what was happening! She was also fascinated with machines when she was seven years old, she took her alarm clock to pieces to find out how it worked. Her hobbies were needlepoint, reading and playing the piano. Both Grace's parents believed that she and her sister should have an education of the same quality as her brother. Her father, Walter Murray, was an insurance broker while her mother, Mary Van Horne, had a love of mathematics which she passed on to her daughter. Grace Hopper was born Grace Brewster Murray, the oldest of three children. American, 1906-1992 Some Facts About Her Childhood
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