biography
| name: |
Hopper, Grace Murray
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| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1906–92)
|
| biography:
| Mathematician, computer programmer, and naval officer, born in New York City, New York, USA. She studied at Vassar College, earned a PhD in mathematics at Yale, then taught mathematics at Vassar. She joined the navy in 1943 and was assigned (1944) to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard, where she wrote programs for the Mark I computer. In 1949 she joined the Eckert-Mauchly Corp, where she helped design UNIVAC I. In the 1950s she developed a high-level language, FLOWMATIC, with which she wrote the first COBOL compiler, and helped standardize COBOL. Known as a combative, unorthodox personality, she retired from the navy reserve in 1966, but returned the following year as a rear-admiral to oversee the navy computer programs. |
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