Grace Murray Hopper Award

The Grace Murray Hopper Awards (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or service contribution at or before age 35.

Recipients

Grace Hopper

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992), née Grace Brewster Murray, was an American computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer in 1944, invented the first compiler for a computer programming language, and was one of those who popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first high-level programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches (in one instance, removing a moth from a computer).

Owing to her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace". The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) is named for her, as is the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC.

Early life and education

Hopper was born in New York City. She was the oldest in a family of three children. Her parents, Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne, were of Dutch and Scottish descent, and attended West End Collegiate Church. Her great-grandfather, Alexander Wilson Russell, an admiral in the US Navy, fought in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.