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Grace Hopper Accomplishments

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Born December 9, 1906, Grace Hopper was a renowned computer scientist and United States Navy Officer. She was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first compilers that enabled computers to be issued commands in common English wording. COBOL is the language that she is most known for developing as well as having accomplished several other notable achievements in her career.
Grace studied math and physics at Vassar College graduating in 1928 where she continued on to Yale where she earned her master's degree for mathematics in 1930. Later that year, she was married to her first and only husband. In 1931, she took on a position teaching at Vassar College while continuing to study at Yale, to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1934. This was an educational achievement not held by many other women of that day. …show more content…

As an alternative, she took a leave of absence from Vassar College and was able to join the Navy Reserves in 1943 and just a year later earned a commission as a Lieutenant Junior Grade.
In 1944 she was assigned at Harvard University as a member of the Bureau of Ships Computation Project that programmed the Harvard Mark I computer system, a team that was led by Howard H. Aiken. The Harvard Mark I was used to process all sorts of large mathematical data for the WWII war effort up to and including the computations used to determine the viability of the first atomic bomb which was detonated only a year later. Hopper stayed with the Harvard team until

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