Voting Station

Grace Hopper

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Military Personnel

The Resume

    (December 9, 1906-January 1, 1992)
    Math instructor/professor at Vasser (1931-43)
    Wrote 'New Types of Irreducibility Criteria' and 'The Ungenerated Seven as an Index to Pythagorean Number Theory'
    Joined U.S. Navy (1943)
    Naval Ordnance Development Award (1946)
    Rear Admiral (1986)
    First Computer Science Man-of-the-Year Award (1969)
    First American to become a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (1973)

Why she might be annoying:

    As a child she took apart the house clocks to see how they work.
    She would have attended Vasser at 16 but she failed the Latin exam.
    The U.S. Navy rejected her on the grounds she was underweight (105 lbs.), a bit old (34) and was needed as a civilian professor.
    She is credited with coining the computer term 'bug,' when a moth flew into the Mark II and cause the computer to shut down. However references show the term bug for a glitch was in use at Harvard.
    She was divorced.
    She began work on octal coding (0-7).

Why she might not be annoying:

    She said: 'You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people.'
    Her co-workers nicknamed her 'Amazing Grace.'
    Many Americans did not know of her accomplishments until she was featured on '60 Minutes.'
    Both of her parents encouraged her to overcome the obstacles of being a woman in a male dominated industry (in the early 1900's).
    She entered Vasser at 17 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa (1928).
    She earned her degree in mathematics and physics.
    She earned a Masters (1930) and PhD in mathematics from Yale (1934)
    She taught math at Vasser for $800 per year (1931).
    She gave up teaching at thirty-four to join the U.S. Navy and help during World War II.
    She was able to get the necessary waivers to join the Navy.
    She programmed the Mark I (the world's first large-scale auto-sequenced digital computer).
    The Mark I was so critical to aiming Navy guns that she often worked round the clock.
    She coined 'debug' as the act of fixing programming errors.
    She helped introduce the first commercial computers UNIVAC I and II.
    She wrote the first compiler (A-0) which was the foundation for programming languages.
    She was ridiculed by her colleagues when she suggested computers would be able to understand english commands. But her 'Flow-matic' compiler understood twenty English statements (1956).
    She was forced to retire from the Naval reserves because of her age, 60 (December 1966) but was called back a few months later.
    The Navy needed her to standardize COBOL, which she did.
    She was the first female retired Naval Reserve to return to active duty.
    She retired as the oldest active duty US Naval officer at 80 (1986).
    At 80, instead of retiring she became senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation (1986-90).
    The Navy named a ship in her honor.
    Her hobbies were needlepoint and piano.

Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 6 Votes: 16.67% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 9 Votes: 55.56% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 6 Votes: 16.67% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 15 Votes: 53.33% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 6 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 19 Votes: 47.37% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 11 Votes: 36.36% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 49 Votes: 32.65% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 25 Votes: 40.0% Annoying
    In 2010, Out of 90 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2009, Out of 55 Votes: 43.64% Annoying
    In 2008, Out of 35 Votes: 37.14% Annoying
    In 2007, Out of 118 Votes: 43.22% Annoying
    In 2006, Out of 152 Votes: 43.42% Annoying
    In 2005, Out of 344 Votes: 63.08% Annoying
    In 2004, Out of 417 Votes: 41.73% Annoying
    In 2003, Out of 100 Votes: 28.00% Annoying