About Grace

Quick Facts
Full Name: Grace Brewster Murray Hopper
Born: New York City, New York - December 9th, 1906
Best Known For: Inventing the first compiler and programming the Harvard MK1 Computer

Grace had a private school education and graduated college in 1928. 2 years later she received her master’s degree in mathematics from Yale and soon after began teaching maths at her old college. During her time teaching she was also doing her PHD in mathematics which she completed in 1934.

After a few more years of teaching Hopper enlisted to the U.S. Naval Reserve to serve as a Rear Admiral during World War II. She was sent to work at Harvard University and worked along side many others to work on the Mark I computer. Not only did Grace work on it but she programmed the computer, punched machine instructions onto tape and wrote the user manual for the computer - all 561 pages; that’s right, she literally wrote the book on it! Some of the calculations this computer ran played a large role in America's war effort.

Fun Fact: during the production of the Mark II Computer she encountered a moth inside the computer, causing problems with its functionality. From this Grace was the first to remove ‘bugs’ from a computer system and coined the frame ‘debugging’ which is still used to this day (although moths aren't usually involved).

In 1952 Grace did some of her most noteworthy work where she invented the world's first computer language compiler, called A-0. This compiler could take human-readable mathematical equations and translate them into binary code that could be read by machines. This invention eventually made it possible for programmers to write out code for a variety of computers instead of programming each computer separately.

Grace received many military and civil medals and has had ships, buildings, awards, and scholarships named in her honour and many more.