Born: Dec. 9, 1906, in New York City.
Education: She graduated from Vassar College in 1928 with a degree in mathematics and physics. She then became an instructor at Vassar while continuing her studies at Yale, where she earned a master’s degree in 1930 and a doctorate in 1934.
Marriage: In 1930 she married Vincent Foster Hopper, a New York University professor. They divorced in 1945.
Military career: After Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) Hopper attempted to join the military but was rejected because of her size, a Yale news release recounted. She tried again and in 1943 joined the U.S. Naval Reserve. She was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, where she worked on computers. She remained in the military, either on active duty or as a reservist, for decades, becoming the oldest officer on active duty in 1982, according to The New York Times. She retired in 1986 with the rank of rear admiral.
Research fellow in engineering: In 1946 Hopper became a research fellow in engineering and applied physics at Harvard's Computation Laboratory. She coined the term “bug” to describe the various baffling issues that plague computers after a moth infiltrated the circuits of the computer, according to Encyclopedia Britannica's website. And in 1949 she took a position as senior mathematician for the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp.
Accomplishments: In 1952 “she and her team developed the first computer language ‘compiler,’ which would make it possible to write programs for multiple computers rather than a single machine,” recounts Yale.To know more:
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