The First Compiler…and Bug!

• Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an early computer pioneer. She was the first programmer for the Mark I Calculator and the developer of the first compiler for a computer programming language. Hopper was born Grace Brewster Murray. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics in 1928 and 1934 became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics.

• She was well-known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early "war stories". While she was working on a Mark II computer at Harvard University, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the system. Though the term computer bug cannot be definitively attributed to Admiral Hopper, she did bring the term into popularity. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, VA http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Hopper.Danis.html