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Grace Hopper
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Grace Hopper

US Navy rear admiral who wrote the first compiler and helped create COBOL

9 December 1906 – 1 January 1992 United States Verified by our editors
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Lived
85 yrs
1906 – 1992
Works listed
2
Compiler, Programming language
Honours
3
Most recent 2016
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Grace Hopper was an American computer scientist and US Navy rear admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I, developed the first compiler in 1952 and championed machine-independent programming languages, leading to COBOL, which still runs much of the world’s banking.

Biography

Early life

Hopper studied mathematics and physics at Vassar College and earned a PhD in mathematics at Yale in 1934, one of few women to do so. She taught at Vassar before joining the US Naval Reserve in 1943.

Harvard Mark I

Assigned to Howard Aiken’s lab at Harvard, she was one of the first programmers of the Mark I computer and wrote its 500-page manual. In 1947 her team found a moth stuck in a relay of the Mark II and taped it into the logbook as the “first actual case of bug being found”.

Compilers and COBOL

At the Eckert–Mauchly company she created the A-0 compiler in 1952, translating mathematical notation into machine code, and later FLOW-MATIC, which used English-like commands. These ideas shaped COBOL (1959), a business language that became the most widely used in the world for decades.

The Navy

Hopper was recalled to the Navy to standardise its computer languages and retired in 1986, aged 79, as a rear admiral — then the oldest serving officer. She was famous for handing out 30-cm lengths of wire to show what a nanosecond is. She died in 1992 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 2016.

Timeline

  1. 1906

    Born in New York City, United States

  2. 1934

    PhD from Yale

  3. 1943

    Joins the US Naval Reserve

  4. 1944

    Programmer on the Harvard Mark I

  5. 1947

    The famous moth in the Mark II

  6. 1952

    A-0 compiler

  7. 1959

    COBOL designed

  8. 1986

    Retires from the Navy

  9. 2016

    Presidential Medal of Freedom

  10. 1992

    Died, aged 85

Notable works

  • 1952

    A-0 System Compiler

  • 1955

    FLOW-MATIC Programming language

Awards and honours

  • Defense Distinguished Service Medal

    1986

  • National Medal of Technology

    1991

  • Presidential Medal of Freedom

    2016

Did you know?

  1. 1

    The destroyer USS Hopper is named after her.

  2. 2

    Her nickname was “Amazing Grace”.

  3. 3

    She kept a clock in her office that ran anticlockwise, to show things need not be done the usual way.

Connections

Related people

Also born on 9 December

Frequently asked

Who is Grace Hopper?

Grace Hopper was an American computer scientist and US Navy rear admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I, developed the first compiler in 1952 and championed machine-independent programming languages, leading to COBOL, which still runs much of the world’s banking.

When did Grace Hopper die?

Grace Hopper died on 1 January 1992 at the age of 85.

Where is Grace Hopper from?

Grace Hopper was born in New York City, United States.

What is Grace Hopper known for?

Grace Hopper is best known for First compiler (A-0); COBOL; popularising the term “debugging”; Harvard Mark I.

What awards has Grace Hopper received?

Notable honours include Defense Distinguished Service Medal (1986), National Medal of Technology (1991), Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016).

References

  1. Grace Hopper — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  2. Grace Hopper — Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  3. Grace Hopper — Goodreads author page. Goodreads. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  4. Grace Hopper — Hindi Wikipedia. Wikipedia (Hindi). Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  5. Grace Hopper (Q11641) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.

Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Grace Hopper”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more

External links

Wikipedia
Filed under COBOLUS NavyWomen in computing Computer ScientistMathematicianNaval Officer

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“Grace Hopper.” TrackFame, last updated 4 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/grace-hopper

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