Voices Raised： Celebrating Women in STEM ｜ Grace Hopper

In 1950, a naval computer scientist would propose a simple but radical new idea. What if a computer, which were at the time still using punch cards, could be taught English? Colleagues were quick to naysay the idea, calling it absurd, but little did they know this scientist would take that idea and usher in a new era of technology and forever change how the world uses computers. Her name was Grace Hopper. After receiving her Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale, Grace found herself teaching at Vassar College, and by 1941, she was easing into the life of being a professor. But then... December 7, 1941. No American will ever forget this Sunday morning in Hawaii. Not soon after, Grace left her position as a professor to join the Navy. But she was deemed both too old at 34 and too small at 105 pounds. But she was persistent, and eventually managed to get a waiver, allowing her to enlist. She was assigned to the Mark I, an early model of computer, which spoke in a language so complex, an entire team was required to make it do anything. Here, Grace had an idea. What if, instead of forcing people to speak computer, we made computers speak human? Her idea was deemed impossible, because no current computer language could understand something that straightforward. So instead, she built a new language, one from the ground up. It was based on English, and it was intuitive. It was called COBOL. Not only did COBOL become the most common computing language in the world, but because of its relative ease of use, it blew the doors open for other industries who wanted to start using computers. With COBOL, Grace Hopper brought computers to the masses. Although its death was predicted many times, COBOL would go on to be the most common computer language for decades. And incredibly, it's still used today. Calling all COBOL programmers. I want to talk about COBOL. Grace stayed in the Navy and was promoted to Rear Admiral. At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest serving officer in the Navy. She was 79.