born December 9, 1906, died January 1, 1992
"It is easier to apologize than to get permission." -- Admiral Grace Hopper
"A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for. Sail out to sea and do new things."
-- Admiral Grace Hopper
Admiral Grace Hopper was a distinguished naval officer and computer scientist. The first person to receive the computer sciences Man of the Year award from the Data Processing Management Association (1969), she is also known as "Amazing Grace". Hopper was a programmer on the world's first large-scale digital computer, Mark I. "It was 51 feet long, eight feet high, eight feet deep," she said. "And it had 72 words of storage and could perform three additions a second."
Her work resulted in the first computer language compiler, and she worked on the development of COBOL, one of the first computer languages. She is the person who first coined the term "bug" when referring to a programming error, which in her case was an actual moth in the computer. In 1973, she became the first woman to be promoted to captain in the navy while on the retired reserve list.
"I seem to do a lot of retiring," said Admiral Hopper, who was born in 1906. She was first told she was "too old" for something when she retired from the Navy for the first time. In 1967 she was recalled to active duty with the Navy. In 1983, she was appointed Rear Admiral, and when she retired again from the Navy in August 1986, she was the nation's oldest active duty officer.
After her retirement from the armed services, she worked as a consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation until her death.
After four decades of pioneering work, Admiral Hopper felt her greatest contribution had been "all the young people I've trained."