Pioneer of programming languages, mother of all programmers.
To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge – she said.
She always stressed that in life she was more interested in the future than the past. Grace (née Brewster Murray) was born on 9 December 1906 in New York. She began her studies at Vassar College to continue at Yale University, where she earned a master’s degree and then a doctorate in mathematics as the first woman in this university’s history.
In 1943, she joined the Naval Reserve, where she was assigned to a computing project at the Bureau of Ships working with Harvard University to develop an automatic calculator, the Harvard Mark I. While participating in this project, Grace became the author of the first manual of operation and programming of the computer (A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator).
Shortly thereafter, she became project manager of the UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer) project as a senior mathematician employed by Remington Rand. Her project, later called Compiler A, was used to translate mathematical notation into machine code. Another of her goals was to create a new programming language that used only English words instead of symbols.
In 1959, Grace Hopper became a technical consultant to computer and industry experts at the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL). The aim of
the meeting was to standardise the machine programming languages currently in use to create a universal coding. The newly defined COBOL language (COmmon Business – Oriented Language) extended the technology proposed by Hopper. During its development, Grace’s suggestion of the need to write in a language similar to English was also used, resulting in the newly defined language becoming a widely used business language.
It was Grace Hopper who popularised the saying ‘bug’ to mean the occurrence of a bug in the system. She once discovered that a computer malfunction had been caused by a moth that had gotten inside the machine.
She was always looking for new solutions, because she believed in the principle: „A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for.” For writing COBOL validation software for the military, Grace Hopper was promoted to the rank of captain in the Office of Naval Information Systems Planning. At 79, she was still working for the military as the most senior officer, serving at the rank of Rear Admiral and was involved in the standardisation of computer languages.
The pioneer of programming languages died in 1992. To commemorate her achievements, the National Defence Academy has designated the Grace Hooper Award for outstanding contributions to the field of information and cyber security.
