Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper 1906-1992 Graduated with a BA in mathematics and physics from Vasser in 1928, and then received her master’s in mathematics from Yale in 1930. She proceeded to teach at Vasser while earning her Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale in 1934. She taught until enlisting in the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1943, where she was commissioned as a lieutenant a year later. She was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard’s Cruft Laboratories, where she worked on the Mark computers. She oversaw programming for the UNIVAC computer at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, creating the first compiler for computer languages, which was a precursor for COBOL. She was recalled to active duty at the age of 60 to tackle standardizing communication between different computer languages. She retired from the Navy at 79, a Rear Admiral as well as the oldest serving officer in the service, to become a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation. In 1991, she was the first woman awarded the National Medal of Technology