Grace Murray Hopper
December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992
Grace Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy
rear admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark
I computer in 1944, and invented the first compiler for a computer
programming language, and the one of those who popularized the idea of
machine-independent programming languages, which led to the
development of COBOL, one of the first high-level programming
languages. She is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for
fixing computer glitches (inspired by an actual moth removed from the
computer). Owing to the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval
rank, she is sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace". The U.S. Navy
Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) is
named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC.
While she
was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in
Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth stuck in
a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that
they were "debugging" the system. Though the term bug had been in use
for many years in engineering to refer to small glitches and
inexplicable problems, Admiral Hopper did bring the term into
popularity. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log
book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American
History in Washington, D.C.
Here are three of her most famous quotes:
