Episode 88: Grace Hopper
On December 9th, 1906 in New York City Grace Brewster Murray was born. Her parents were Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne. Her Father was a Yale Graduate who owned his own insurance company. Grace would primarily attend private schools which would lead her to graduating from Vassar College in 1928 with degrees in mathematics and Physics. She would later go on to receive her master’s degree in Mathematics in 1930 from Yale University Like her papa. In 1931, Grace would teach mathematics at Vassar while pursuing her Doctorate at Yale. Grace would complete her Ph.D. in mathematics and mathematical physics in 1934. Grace took a pause from teaching to join the U.S. Naval Reserve (aka the Women’s Reserve) in 1945. After the war, Grace continued to work with Howard Aiken (the guy behind the Mark I) to further develop the later iterations like the Mark II and the Mark III. After her time in the Navy Reserve, Grace would join the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation - which would later be acquired by Remington Rand. This is the company that first made the personal electronic computer. And later she would work on the Universal Automatic Computer. When Grace is 79 - she FINALLY retires AGAIN from the military as a rear admiral. She was the oldest serving officer in the US armed forces. At 85, Grace would like for real retire, and a year later she would pass away. She was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Caryatid: Fei Fei Li
Fei Fei is the co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute, as well as the founder of “AI for All” - a non-profit “aimed to increase diversity in AI”. Originally from Beijing, China - Fei Fei has a degree from Princeton in physics and a Ph.D. in Computer science from California Institute of Technology. After graduating she taught engineering and computer science courses at the University of Illinois and Princeton before securing tenure at Stanford. Fei Fei’s focus is on cognitive and computational neuroscience and machine learning to improve AI image recognition ability.
Check out other amazing ladies in the article that was mentioned in this episode: https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/Top-9-most-influential-women-in-technology_
References
Information and images can be found under the following sources:
Bellis, Mary. “Who Invented the Mark I Computer?” ThoughtCo, Feb. 2020, www.thoughtco.com/howard-aiken-and-grace-hopper-4078389#:~:text=Used%20by%20the%20U.S.%20Navy,was%20in%20operation%20until%201959.&text=The%20computer%20was%20controlled%20by,subtraction%2C%20multiplication%20and%20division%20functions.
“Biography: Grace Hopper.” National Women’s History Museum, www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/grace-hopper.
“Biography of Grace Murray Hopper.” Office of the President, 9 Aug. 2017, president.yale.edu/biography-grace-murray-hopper.
Center, Smithsonian Lemelson. “Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age.” Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, 16 Sept. 2022, invention.si.edu/grace-hopper-and-invention-information-age.
“Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992): A Legacy of Innovation and Service.” YaleNews, 18 Nov. 2021, news.yale.edu/2017/02/10/grace-murray-hopper-1906-1992-legacy-innovation-and-service.
“---.” YaleNews, 18 Nov. 2021, news.yale.edu/2017/02/10/grace-murray-hopper-1906-1992-legacy-innovation-and-service.
Isaacson, Walter. “Grace Hopper, Computing Pioneer.” Harvard Gazette, 8 Mar. 2023, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/12/grace-hopper-computing-pioneer
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