Sometimes a person accomplishes so much in their life that when it comes to writing about them you think—holy shit where to start? Let’s begin with Grace Hopper’s appearance on 60 Minutes in 1983, when a Member of Congress saw her on TV and said holy shit she is way too awesome we need to recognize that.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: March 6, 1983--
Born in New York in 1906, Hopper became a computer scientist, and was awarded a PhD in mathematics from Yale in 1934. She attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was denied because apparently the age of 34 was too old. So, she joined the Naval Reserves instead and had to get an exemption because she weighed 15 pounds less than the minimum 120-pound requirement. She graduated top of her class from the Naval Reserve school and was assigned to Harvard’s Computation Project in 1944.
Hopper was part of creating UNIVAC I, one of the earliest commercial computers, and her work with programming languages led to the development of COBOL. Her later efforts transformed the way Defense Department computer systems went from being centralized toward more distributed networks.
Grace Hopper proved so invaluable the Navy couldn’t get enough of her. Regulations forced her to retire in 1966 at age 60 with the rank of commander. The following year the Navy called her and said yeah we really need you back for six months. That six months turned into an “indefinite assignment.” She retired again in 1971 at age 65 and a year later they said, uh, Grace? Can you please come back again and she said fine and returned and they promoted her to captain. Then on March 6, 1983, at the age of 76, she was interviewed by broadcast journalist Morley Safer about being the oldest woman still serving in the entire Armed Forces. Congressman Phillip Crane was watching and said why is she only a captain? He sponsored a joint resolution in Congress that led to her being promoted to commodore later that year via special presidential appointment. Two years later the rank of commodore was renamed, and she officially became Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.
Hopper finally retired in 1986, a few months shy of her 80th birthday. At the time, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the Navy of any gender. But she didn’t stop working, taking a consultancy position with Digital Equipment Corporation shortly afterward.
Grace Hopper died in 1992 at the age of 85 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
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Adm Hopper was also credited with logging the first ever case of a "bug" being found in code: https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/september/9/
I got a degree in computer science in 1985. About 35% of my graduating class was women. In 2000, that ratio was down around 10%, thanks mainly to home computers being marketed heavily towards boys. If only more had been taught in school about the many remarkable contributions to computing made by women.