Grace Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. She popularized the term “debugging” for fixing computer glitches. She is credited with having coined the term “computer bug”.
Hopper had a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Vassar College and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University. In 1934, she married Vincent Foster Hopper, who encouraged her to continue her education. At age 37, she began working on her Ph.D., which she completed in 1949 while working as a research fellow at Harvard University; her thesis was titled The Education of a Mathematician.
During World War II, Hopper worked for the U.S. Navy on the Manhattan Project at Columbia University where she programmed their Mark I computer; it was here that she debugged software by finding and correcting errors in code (i program). In 1946, after returning to teaching at Vassar College for several years, Hopper took a leave of absence to work on UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer), where innovations such as flowcharts were used to document programming processes for others to follow; this helped spur industry-wide adoption of these practices.. In 1952 A User Manual For The EDSAC Was Published By Cambridge University Press And This Included One Of The First Examples Of A Flowchart..She also developed COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), one of the first high-level programming languages designed for business use; this led to its widespread adoption throughout industry .