Grace Hopper

En Whatis:

Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) was a pioneer of computer science. Hopper is generally credited with developments that led to COBOL, the programming language for business applications on which the world's largest corporations ran for more than a generation. After receiving her Ph.D. in mathematics at Yale, Hopper worked as an associate professor at Vassar College before joining the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1943. She went on to work as a researcher and mathematician at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. and the Sperry Corporation. Having retired from the Navy after World War II, she returned in 1967 to work at the Naval Data Automation Command. By the time of her death, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper had made many contributions to the field of software engineering and was arguably the world's most famous programmer.
At Eckerd-Mauchly, Hopper developed programs for the first large-scale digital computer, the Mark I. She also developed the first compiler, the A-O. She published the first paper on compilers in 1952. The successor to the the A-O, named FLOW-MATIC, lead to the development of the COBOL programming language. Until then programming was done using assembler language. Admiral Hopper's idea was to make a programming language closer to ordinary language so that it could be used by non-technical people, thus opening the practice of programming to the business world and freeing it from the rarefied environments of science and engineering.
Admiral Hopper remained in the Navy until 1986 and then worked as a senior consultant for DEC until shortly before her death. She was highly sought after as an enthusiastic and entertaining public speaker and educator of young programmers. Hopper was an early advocate of the use of shared code libraries and developed compiler verification software and compiler standards.
Hopper is also credited with applying the engineering term bug to computing when her team found a moth trapped in a relay of the Mark II computer. This particular "bug" was removed, taped to the log book, and now resides at the Smithsonian Institute.
Special note: Today is Grace's birthday, which is why we've featured this computing pioneer as the Word of the Day.

Curiosamente, estaba leyendo sobre Mrs Hopper, tratando de anotar sus datos para Wikipedia en castellano, que aún no tiene una entrada sobre ella, cuando Whatis la recordó en su día.
Quisiera resaltar dos o tres puntos sobre su trayectoria:
Pionera en dos pasos iniciales en los 40 y 50: la serie Mark, y el Univac; autora o coautora del primer compilador en Estados Unidos (el A-O mencionado), del segundo (B-O), y de sus derivaciones al desarrollo del COBOL. Autora de la conceptualización de un "lenguaje" de programación, capaz de expresar instrucciones en una forma entendible para las personas. Miembro fundador de CODASYL.
Y finalmente, hay otro aspecto que quisiera destacar: Mrs Hopper, siendo una matemática, decidió entrar a la fuerza naval de Estados Unidos en plena segunda guerra mundial, con una decisión suficientemente firme para vencer la falta de cumplimentación de requisitos del ingreso. Retirada al fin de la guerra, volvió a servir luego, retirándose con el grado de Comandante (Admiral). Rasgos que la definen tanto a ella como a su país.
Pueden leerse datos biográficos en Yale, Elizabeth Dickason, Saint Andrews, el Agnes Scott College, y el Women's International Center, entre otros. Existe un sitio dedicado a ella.

La fotografía, tomada de la Universidad de Saint Andrews, Escocia.