Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992)is probably the most well known American woman who has ever received a PhD in mathematics, having appeared on a segment of 60 Minutes, on the David Letterman Show, and as the grand marshal of the Orange Bowl Parade.
Grace Murray received a master’s degree from Yale in 1930 and then married Vincent Hopper. She continued her studies at Yale while her husband was teaching English at New York University and was awarded a PhD in 1934. She had started teaching at Vassar in 1931 and led a fairly typical life as a college mathematics teacher until World War II when she joined the US Naval Reserve.
Hopper began a long and extremely distinguished career in computers in early 1944 when she was commissioned a Lieutenant (junior grade) and began her first assignment working on the Mark I computer, formally known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, at the Cruft Research Laboratory at Harvard University.
Except for a short period of time in 1967, Hopper remained in the Naval Reserve until 1986. In 1949 she took a position as senior mathematician at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. There she developed the first English-language data processing language, FLOW-MATIC, for the UNIVAC I computer and became a vocal advocate for the standardization of computer languages. In 1967 then Commander Hopper was returned to active duty and in 1986, she was forced to retire from the navy. At the time of her retirement Hopper was 79 and held the rank of Rear Admiral (lower half). She was the oldest office on duty in the armed forces and, at her request, the retirement ceremony took place aboard the navy's oldest commissioned warship, the USS Constitution. Four years after her death a guided missile destroyer was christened the USS Hopper.
Grace Hopper & Cruft Research Lab colleagues with Mark I during World War II. (96-3277)
In the late 1960s and early 1970s Hopper was one of several women mathematicians interviewed for the Smithsonian’s Computer History Project. In 1972 she donated her papers and several items to the Smithsonian that relate to her work with computers. In 1985 other objects were collected by the museum.
This bundle consists of about one hundred pieces of plastic-coated wire, each about 30 cm (11.8 in) long. Each piece of wire represents the distance an electrical signal travels in a nanosecond, one billionth of a second.
Description
This bundle consists of about one hundred pieces of plastic-coated wire, each about 30 cm (11.8 in) long. Each piece of wire represents the distance an electrical signal travels in a nanosecond, one billionth of a second. Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992), a mathematician who became a naval officer and computer scientist during World War II, started distributing these wire "nanoseconds" in the late 1960s in order to demonstrate how designing smaller components would produce faster computers.
The "nanoseconds" in this bundle were among those Hopper brought with her to hand out to Smithsonian docents at a March 1985 lecture at NMAH. Later, as components shrank and computer speeds increased, Hopper used grains of pepper to represent the distance electricity traveled in a picosecond, one trillionth of a second (one thousandth of a nanosecond).
Reference: Kathleen Broome Williams, Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.
This metal badge reads "Cruft Laboratory, Staff No. 62, Harvard University", and was donated to the Smithsonian by Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992).
Description
This metal badge reads "Cruft Laboratory, Staff No. 62, Harvard University", and was donated to the Smithsonian by Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992). Hopper had joined the United States Naval Reserves in December 1943 and attended the Naval Reserve Midshipman’s School for Women through June 1944. She was then posted to the U.S. Navy’s Computation project that was housed at the Cruft Laboratory.
Hopper had a PhD in mathematics (Yale 1934) and her assignment was to write computer code for the Mark I computer, formally known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper continued working at the Harvard Computational Laboratory until 1949 although she, along with other women in the Naval Reserve, had been released from active duty in 1946.
This machine-embroidered cloth arm patch was worn around 1944 by a US Navy Specialist I, Third Class.
Description
This machine-embroidered cloth arm patch was worn around 1944 by a US Navy Specialist I, Third Class. Navy Specialist is a rating that refers to an enlisted sailor's job specialty and the letter I inside the diamond indicates that the sailor who wore this patch had been trained to be a machine operator for a punch-card accounting machine, an electric accounting machine, or a tabulating machine. The single red chevron below the diamond indicates that the specialist's rate, or pay grade, was equivalent to that of a Petty Officer Third Class.
Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992), a mathematician who became a naval officer and computer scientist during World War II, donated this patch to the Smithsonian. Hopper joined the U.S. Naval Reserves in December 1943. From July 1944 she worked with the Navy’s Computation Project at Harvard University’s Cruft Laboratory writing computer code for the Mark I computer, formally known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.
Similar patches (with white background) are shown on World War II images of specialists working on the Computation Project. Hopper herself had been commissioned a lieutenant (junior grade) before she was assigned to the project, so she would not have worn this patch.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1944
ID Number
1989.0093.02
accession number
1989.0093
catalog number
1989.0093.02
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