A pioneer in innovating computer technology

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was born in New York City in 1906. Born to a successful family, Hopper was bright and cheeky from a young age. In 1930, she received her Masters in Mathematics from Yale and in 1934, she received her PhD in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics. After the attack on Pearl Harbor and with the US entering World War II, Hopper enlisted in the US Naval Reserves in December 1943. There she worked closely with Howard Aiken, a pioneer in computer engineering and a co-inventor of early versions of today’s computers.

Hopper worked as a researcher funded by US Navy grants until 1949 when she began working for the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation where she developed the first compiler based programming language. Later, in 1959 Hopper helped pioneer COBOL, short for “common business oriented language.” Hopper was very adamant about making sure that any new programming language was user friendly so that it could be used by data processors with relative ease. With this philosophy she was able lay the foundation to make computers easily programmable.

Later on after having served her time in the US Navy she went on to give lectures at colleges such as MIT, University of Tennessee, and many more colleges around the United States about computer science with topics on how nanoseconds and micro seconds work with computers to others to teach them about something. Due to her achievement with writing a programming language that was closer to english allowed her to set a standard for modern day programming with the world with languages such as C++, C#, and python as well as many more coding languages being mimicked from her great achievement. Overall Grace had set a very high bar in the computer science industry with these achievements. It is very ironic that she has really made a great finding in her life and she is not ranked in the many articles that are written about most impactful computer scientists.

In conclusion Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was an amazing female computer scientist also known as being a pioneer of computer programming that was to live during her era and she stills shines during this day in age due to her amazing inventions that she has created she paved a way in technology for women. Also being a great computer scientist she was also an amazing Navy Admiral with lots of achievements. Overall she is a very amazing woman that has made a great mark in history as well as in Women’s History Month as well.

References:

• https://news.yale.edu/2017/02/10/grace-murray-hopper-1906-1992-legacy-innovation-and-service
• https://computerhistory.org/profile/grace-murray-hopper/
• https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/12/grace-hopper-computing-pioneer/