On this day in 1997 the U.S. Navy warship USS Hopper was commissioned in San Francisco. It was named after accomplished American computer scientist Rear Admiral “Amazing” Grace Hopper and is only the second U.S. warship to be named after a woman from the Navy’s own ranks.
Grace Hopper was one of the first programmers who worked on the Harvard Mark I computer and developed one of the first compiler-related tools. She also helped popularize the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of the COBOL programming language. Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees within her lifetime and received many awards for her accomplishments, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to her posthumously on November 22, 2016.
“Amazing” Grace Hopper – Image taken from Wikipedia