Celebrating Women in Computing – Grace Hopper #SheIsWhyICode

SIGUCCS Commuity

Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992)

Known for creating COBOL, the first programming language, Grace Hopper is referred to as a pioneer computer scientist. After earning a PhD in mathematics from Yale and teaching at Vassar College, Grace Hopper joined the Navy Reserves during World War II. There she began working on the Harvard Mark 1 computing team.

Hopper with other programmers

Shortly thereafter, she joined Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and began working on the team that developed the UNIVAC machine. It was during this time that Hopper began thinking about creating a programming language based on English and eventually created a compiler that could convert English terms into machine language – COBOL was born. In 1969, she was named “Computer Science Man of the Year”.

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About SIGUCCS Editor

The Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services (SIGUCCS) is an association of professionals who support and manage the diverse aspects of information technology services at higher education institutions. SIGUCCS is one of 36 special interest groups of ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world's largest educational and scientific computing society. SIGUCCS focuses on issues surrounding the support, delivery, and management of those services, and provides professional development opportunities for its members and the other individuals in the field.