Monday, October 17, 2016

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, Founder of Computer Science

 

Although she was not directly involved in American Politics, I think Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper is an important figure that may have been disappeared from our historical memory like Jo Ann Robinson. Admiral Hopper is considered the founder of Computer Science and she was one of the many pioneers during the Age of Computing. If you're looking at the picture of her above, you can see that Admiral Hopper served in the US Naval Reserved during WW2. After the military and  during "her lifetime as a leader in the field of software development concepts, she contributed to the transition from primitive programming techniques to the use of sophisticated compilers" including the B-O compiler called FLOW-MATIC for Univac, the first commercial large-scale electronic computer. This English Language compiler is the first assembly language developed to use English words. Admiral Hopper was an inspiration to women and scientists and her work paved the way for modern data processing (and also what I'm learning in my CS class!). Below is a short biography and the second link is Admiral Hopper's The Education of a Computer (1988) that discusses the tools and techniques used to create Univac.

Shoutout to Professor Dodds from my CS 5 class for posting this for this weeks' reading response!

http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html

https://www.cs.hmc.edu/~cs5grad/cs5/educationOfAComputer.pdf

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