Scientist And Naval Officer Grace – Naval Reserve Officer Grace Hopper was a computer pioneer during World War II and laid the foundation for today’s technology.
When US Navy Lieutenant Grace Hopper was assigned to work on the Mark IV electromagnetic computer in 1944, it came as no surprise. Women have been working with computers in scientific jobs for more than a century.
Scientist And Naval Officer Grace
A group of computers working at Harvard University (circa 1900) analyzing information and measurements; they are paid less than factory workers. From Harvard Libraries’ Hollis Archives.
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Nicole-Reine Lepaute worked with a small group in France in the 1750s to predict the return of Halley’s Comet and later published predictions of solar eclipses. Maria Mitchell, who became a professor of astronomy at Vassar College, calculated the orbit of Venus in the mid-nineteenth century, just ten years after Ada Lovelace developed what was expected to be the first computer-based algorithm.
A few decades later, an astrologer at Harvard University discovered that he could hire female mathematicians to do calculations and research for less than the cost of hiring a male. He assembled a team that included Annie Jump Cannon, who had created the first classification system.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, women were used as computers for all kinds of data collection. During World War I, both the United States and Britain built tables through bombs using the work of their computer teams.
This is where Grace Murray grew up, born in late 1906 in New York, and developed an interest in mathematics. By the end of Hopper’s career, the term “computer” no longer meant a person tasked with doing the calculations, and instead had become the name for a machine that did the work itself.
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When Grace applied to Vassar at age 16, she was rejected (her Latin grades were too low), but she was accepted the following year. He graduated from Vassar with a degree in mathematics in 1928, received a master’s degree from Yale in 1930, and a doctorate in 1934. His research was in algebraic number theory and geometry, and he became an expert in the use of symmetry. It created a good foundation for his later work in programming.
Reprogramming ENIAC Programmers Marlyn Wescoff (left) and Ruth Lichterman (right) reprogram ENIAC in 1946. US Army Research Museum.
Now known as Grace Hopper, after her marriage in 1930, she continued to teach mathematics at Vassar, as she had done since 1931. She became an assistant professor at Vassar in 1941. When the United States entered World War II, Hopper tried to stay with the Navy . , but was rejected. He was given three reasons for this conclusion – he was 34 (too big), too white (105 pounds), and his position as a math teacher was already important during the war.
Hopper did not give up and in 1943 he was expelled from Vassar and accepted into the WAVES with an exemption due to his weight. He graduated first in his class and was commissioned a lieutenant, junior class, when he was posted to Harvard as part of the Office of Naval Computation Project. He joined the programming department and became Howard Aiken’s most important editor.
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Young Grace Hopper stands behind a car parked near the Cruft Lab, Harvard University, ca. 1945–1947. From the Grace Murray Hopper Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
After World War II, Hopper requested a transfer to the regular Navy, but his request was denied, as he was 38, too old. He himself turned down a full professorship at Vassar to stay in the reserve and work as a researcher at the Harvard Computation Lab. Hopper remained until 1949, when he became chief mathematician on the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) project. In 1950, the UNIVAC1 became the first mainframe computer on the commercial market.
Surprisingly, Grace Hopper was in charge of the men. In this he was unique. Katherine Johnson and Margaret Hamilton were computers and programmers at NASA, trusted by astronauts but not by leading humans. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) programmers made advances in computing but worked as an all-female team. Hopper not only guided his colleagues, but also set boundaries and foundations for their work.
Margaret Hamilton Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist, stood in her office at MIT in 1969 next to a printout of the computer program for the Apollo mission. Courtesy of NASA.
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While working at UNIVAC, Hopper proposed developing executable programming languages (or compilers as they are now called) for computers to run. At that time, programs had to be written in machine language. He argued that it would be easier to have the developers write in an English translation and create a patch. He began building the first compiler and finished it in 1952, and he led efforts to create the first compiled language, which became the first widely used language COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language).
Grace Hopper was a proponent of two other important ideas in computing. First, an application should be hardware independent. In other words, you don’t have to completely rewrite a program to use it on another computer. Another is that small distributed software and storage systems are better than large centralized systems. This is the model we still use today, where personal computers access information and programs stored on servers accessible over the Internet.
Navy photo of Commodore Grace Hopper from 1984, when she was promoted to Commodore. Courtesy of the US Navy.
Hopper retired with the rank of chief from the United States Navy at the age of 60 in 1966, as required by Navy regulations. It was restored to service in 1967, before being decommissioned in 1971. It was restored in 1972 and promoted to captain status. Grace Hopper’s final retirement from the Navy came in 1986, following several Congressional decisions to extend her service and a promotion to Commodore in 1983. In 1985, the situation changed. The Commodore is not the Rear Admiral and this is his position upon retirement. .
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“The most important thing I have achieved, apart from building cohesion, is educating young people.” They come to me, you know, and say, ‘Do you think we can do this?’ I say, ‘Try it.’ And I go back. They need it. I check on them as they get older and push them every now and then so they don’t forget to take chances.”
Grace Hopper died on New Year’s Day in 1992. She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Yale University renamed one of its colleges after him and in 2016 later awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When she retired from the US Navy in 1986 at the age of 79, Grace Hopper was the oldest officer in the service.
Grace Hopper appeared on television with David Letterman in 1986, explaining nanoseconds and picoseconds to her host.
“People are very resistant to change. They like to say, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ I try to fight it.”
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“The ’51 merger, no one believed it. I had a compiler running and nobody wanted to touch it, because they told me carefully, computers can only do numbers, they can’t write programs. Testing people is a sales job.”
Computer programmer Grace Hopper helped develop a compiler that pioneered the general-purpose COBOL language and became a command center in the US Navy.
Grace Hopper joined the US Navy during World War II and was assigned to program the Mark I computer. She continued to work with computers after the war and led the group that created the first computer programming language, which led to the popular COBOL language. He resumed his service on the ship in his 70s and was the last one known before retiring in 1986.
Born Grace Brewster Murray in New York City on December 9, 1906, Grace Hopper studied mathematics and physics at Vassar College. After graduating from Vassar in 1928, she went on to Yale University, where she graduated with a master’s degree in mathematics in 1930. That same year, she married Vincent Foster Hopper and became Grace Hopper (a name she kept even after the couple divorced in 1945). . . Beginning in 1931, Hopper began teaching at Vassar while attending Yale, where he received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1934—and became one of the first women to receive such a degree.
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Hopper, who became an assistant professor at Vassar, continued to teach until World War II forced him to join the U.S. Navy in December 1943 (he chose the Navy because of his grandfather’s service). He was commissioned a lieutenant in June 1944. Because of his mathematical skills, Hopper was assigned to the Office of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, where he learned how to program the Mark I computer.
After the war, Hopper stayed in the Navy as a second lieutenant. As a researcher at Harvard, he worked with
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