Autographed Photograph of Grace Hopper
date: label: date made
content: photograph
label: date made
content: photograph 1973-1980, signature 1983-1985
notes: label: Description
content: This photograph is signed “Grace Murray Hopper Commodore USNR” but was taken while Hopper was a Captain in the US Naval Reserve. While neither the photograph nor the autograph is dated, one can deduce a date range for the photograph from the six military ribbons visible in the photograph, and a date range for the autograph from Hopper’s use of the title commodore. Among the ribbons, the most prestigious one, the Legion of Merit, is seen on the top left; Hopper received this award in August 1973 in the same ceremony that marked her promotion to captain. The photograph was taken before she was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal in December 1980 since the ribbon for that medal, which is next in importance to the Legion of Merit award, does not appear in the middle of the top row. Hopper autographed the picture sometime during the two years that she was called commodore, i.e., from the time she was promoted to commodore in November 1983 until the title Commodore was changed to rear admiral (lower half) in November 1985. Hence the photograph was taken between 1973 and 1980 and signed between late 1983 and late 1985.
label: Description
content: Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) had a long and distinguished career in both computers and the navy and continues to be recognized by both communities. In 1994 the Grace Hopper Celebration Women in Computing was founded and is now held annually. In 1996 a guided missile destroyer was christened the USS Hopper, only the second combat ship named after a female member of the navy (the first, christened fifty-two years earlier, was named after Chief Nurse Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee, Superintendent of the US Navy Nurse Corps 1911-1922). In addition, several naval buildings are named in Hopper’s honor.
label: Description
content: Hopper began her career as a mathematician, having received a bachelor’s degree from Vassar in 1928 and a master’s degree from Yale in 1930, both as Grace Murray. She married Vincent Foster Hopper in 1930 and the following year returned to Vassar as an assistant in mathematics . She also continued her studies at Yale and in 1934 received her doctorate in mathematics. Although Hopper is often cited as the first woman to have received a PhD in mathematics from Yale, she actually followed ten women who had received that degree between 1895 and 1925. She and Vincent Hopper were divorced in 1945.
label: Description
content: After the bombing of Pearl Harbor Grace Hopper tried to join the navy but, because she was over-age, she could not enlist In the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). However, in December 1943 she was allowed to join the US Naval Reserve and graduated from the Naval Reserve Midshipman’s School for Women in June 1944. Hopper was then commissioned a Lieutenant (jg) and was assigned to work on the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, known as the Mark I computer, at Harvard. That assignment launched Hopper’s career in computer science.
label: Description
content: In 1949 Hopper 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. She was forced to retire from the Naval Reserve at the end of 1966 but in August 1967 then Commander Hopper was returned to active duty in order to standardize COBOL for the navy. Except for this short period of time in 1967, Hopper remained in the US Naval Reserve until she was again forced to retire at age 79.
label: Description
content: See also the objects in transactions 1985.3088 (collected at a talk given by Hopper in 1985) and 1989.0093 (related to Hopper’s assignment to the Navy’s Computation project at Harvard).
label: Description
content: Reference:
label: Description
content: Judy Green and Jeanne LaDuke, <I>Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhDs</I>, Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 2009, pp. 205-206.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Computers
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Sherman L. Naidorf
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2003.3009.01
label: nonaccession number
content: 2003.3009
label: catalog number
content: 2003.3009.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Photograph
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 10 in x 8 in; 25.4 cm x 20.32 cm