Grace Murray Hopper

Grace Murray Hopper is one of the most important figures both in the creation of modern computer science and in the history of the U.S. Navy. A Phi Beta Kappa student at Vassar, she earned her Ph.D. at Yale (1934). Entering the Navy in World War II, she helped create the operation protocols for the first American computer. After the war, Hopper taught at Harvard and worked in the defense industry while also serving in the Navy Reserve. She led the team that helped compile the first computer language (1952), as well as later evolutions that led to COBOL and FORTRAN, building blocks of computer programming. In 1966 she retired, but her work was so valuable that she was almost immediately recalled, serving for nineteen more years and rising to the rank of admiral. In addition to her academic prowess, Hopper was an inspirational figure, known as “Amazing Grace” in both the armed forces and the scientific community.