Do you know about Grace Hopper?
Dear friends of women in science,
I was cleaning up some old magazines and found a review of a book called Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age by Kurt W. Beyer. It came out in 2009. Sorry, my magazines tend to accumulate for some time before I get around to heaving them into the recycling bin!
Given our earlier discussions of computer science and how hard it was for females to persist in the field (except in Malasia), I was captured and read the review by Jay Pasachoff, in Key Reporter for spring, 2010. Pasachoff says Hopper's roles at Harvard in computing back in the 1940s were "legendary." Wow! Clearly she was important at the dawn of computer science. And furthermore, she was in the Navy, not exactly a woman's dream employer back in those days. She worked with Harvard's Mark I computer, one of the big, early tube-based main frame computers. Some say it was the first such computer.
Hopper received the PhD in 1934 from Yale, in mathematics and took a tenure track job at Vassar, then a women's college. So many of the early women, who became scientists as society began to open up opportunities, took up careers at women's colleges due to hiring discrimination at major research universities. A case could be made that without women's colleges, there might never have been major progress in opening up science to women. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Grace Hopper joined the Navy WAVES and was assigned to work with Howard Aiken at Harvard.
Hopper helped to invent higher level systems programming and she is credited with the development of the concept of the subroutine, a staple of programming. She was important in developing COBOL, a computer language that was highly successful, particularly in business and administrative uses.
Her highest naval rank was rear admiral. She was retired in 1986 at the age of 79, the oldest active officer in the navy. So women have definitely made their chops in computer science. Now we need to make sure that they can still survive in the field.
cheers,
Laura Hoopes
Sorry I'm coming to this two years late but I found your article doing a google search.
I heard about Grace Hopper in high school in the early 70s. I doubt she went into computer science hoping to be remembered for her contributions. I suspect she did it simply because she had a job to do (there was a war going on, after all).
Thanx for a great article.
Hi Gensie and exCS,
I know, even bio classes don't often mention who did the experiments any longer either. It's almost like it was done by ghosts. Why go into the field if your contribution will never be acknowledged? Maybe to reveal the secrets that entice you, or to help others with the knowledge you've gained. I used to really like featuring the scientists, male and female, when I taught introductory biology. Wish it were still part of the strategy!
cheers,
Laura
I agree with Gensie. It's like all this stuff was invented last week by a male high school geek. No leaders are usually mentioned as having invented methods, male or female. I'm not sure if it would be better to attribute things, since probably a lot came from the geeky guys, but its is good to know about Grace Hopper. I'll think about her whenever I write a subroutine.
No, I never heard of her. How many male pioneers of computer science were mentioned? Not many. CS does not have much of a tradition of attribution of discoveries. Nice to know about Hopper!
