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Grace Murry Hopper (1906)close

Born Grace Brewster Murray in New York City, New York, Grace Hopper was educated at Vassar College and Yale University. She became an associate professor of mathematics at Vassar, and joined the Navy in 1942. She was assigned as a programmer on the Mark I, the first large-scale US computer. She is credited with inventing the compiler, a program that translates instructions for a computer from English to a language the computer can understand. She helped develop COBOL (the Common Business-Oriented Language) for the UNIVAC, the first commercial electronic computer. By a special act of Congress she was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral in 1983.

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