Grace Hopper, (1906-1992) pioneer computer programmer.
At 35, Hopper re-invented her life; she got a divorce and joined the Navy, becoming a computer programmer. Hopper’s life exemplifies the struggles that 20th century women scientists faced; initially relegated to academia, WWII provided her new opportunities where her skills were valued. Post-war, she struggled to hang onto her industry job. She faced isolation, mental health challenges, and loneliness in her career. Her contributions were forgotten or overshadowed by other male, tech giants in the late 20th century.
In March 2014, I reviewed a Grace Hopper biography for my Women Scientists class which I pasted below.
Book Review: Beyer, Kurt W. Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2009.
Reinvention at Mid-Life
Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age is a somewhat incomplete account of Grace Hopper’s role in the computing industry. Beyer, who is an ex-naval officer and lecturer on technological innovation, immediately prefaces his book with the goal to “strip back the layers of rhetoric and to uncover a more authentic Grace Hopper in the context of the early computer industry” (2). Basically, he wants to provide a more complex portrait of Grace Hopper than the “heroic pioneer who was single-handedly responsible for the invention of computer programming’ (3). However, Beyer fails to deliver on this portrait.
The biography is chronological and focuses mainly on the years 1944-1960, when Hopper joined the Navy and made several developments in the field of programming. Beyer’s attempts to humanize Grace Hopper by touching on some of the more troubling aspects of her life, such as her suicide attempts and alcohol addiction. This narrow time range, however, prevents the reader from learning about her marriage, her early years as a professor at Vassar, and her later career and reputation as a pioneer in programming.
Grace Hopper’s career as a programmer essentially stemmed from a midlife crisis which coincided with World War II. Beyer asserts that Hopper “re-invented” herself by joining the Navy and separating (later divorcing) her husband. Beyer describes Hopper’s pre-war life as almost idyllic; Hopper’s family and husband, Vincent, supported her career, and they were relatively well-off financially. Hopper became a tenured professor at Vassar, where she created innovative, interdisciplinary math courses that were popular with students; she met resistance from some faculty, but she gained approval from the dean. Her interdisciplinary approach to teaching would aide her programming career.
By the time the war began, however, Beyer suggests that “deep down Grace wanted to escape a job that was secure and respected but no longer challenging” (120). While her need to “re-invent” herself partly stemmed from her dissatisfaction with her career, Beyer gives little detail as to why Hopper initiated the divorce with her husband, which is odd since their marriage appeared to be so mutually supportive
[NOTE: my professor commented that infidelity was likely involved. They separated in 1941 and officially divorced in 1945. I recently searched Ancestry.com to see if I could find their divorce records. The only thing I could find was that her husband remarried in 1945].
Navigating a Toxic Work Environment
LEFT: Howard Aiken and his aggressive philosophy, RIGHT Mark I computer at Harvard.
The biography then shifts to her work at the Harvard Computation Laboratory under Commander Howard Aiken. Aiken’s Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Mark I), was built by IBM and was one of the first programmable computers. Beyer goes into meticulous detail about the history of Mark I’s development, its defects and abilities, as well as other lab members, especially Mark I’s designer, Aiken himself. In fact, Beyer gives a very detailed history about the computer and programming and the many others involved into its development. While Beyer acknowledges the extent to which Hopper contributed to these programs, Hopper is often overshadowed in her own biography.
What is interesting, however, is how Hopper’s own nostalgic recollections of Aiken’s lab contrast with the environment that Beyer describes. Beyer explains that Hopper, who had become one of the lab’s most dedicated and skillful coders, was put in charge of Mark I in the spring of 1945 and that “she had demonstrated her leadership skills in an antagonistic environment” (88). Beyer, however, demonstrates that Aiken was verbally abusive and obsessed with hierarchy, secrecy, and deadlines that prevented innovation. Hopper would often act as a mediator between Aiken and the lab members, in addition to publicly defending Aiken; in turn, Hopper had the most privilege in the lab and was his “right-hand girl” (95).
Yet Beyer rarely accounts for any specific discrimination against Hopper herself. The lab was generally antagonistic, and while there were other incidents between Aiken and lab members, there appears not to have been many incidents with Hopper. In fact, we rarely get a sense of any personal hostility that Hopper overcame herself; it appears that Hopper was favored in the lab. One exception may have been the fact that she did not receive direct credit for writing the Mark I and Mark II computer manuals; all of the lab member names were listed in order by naval rank.
“Back to the Kitchen”
Hopper coined the term ‘bug’, or failure in the code, when she found a moth in the computer which disrupted the machine.
When Hopper’s three-year contract with Harvard ended in 1949, she took a job at the startup Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC). She was warmly received by the startup; EMCC had many female programmers and encouraged innovation and collaboration. Hopper is quoted as saying that “I felt as if I’d acquired all the freedom and all of the pleasures of the world; the instruction code was beautiful” (194). She began working on UNIVAC, a computer that was much faster and efficient than Mark II. However, EMCC soon faced financial difficulties and was purchased by Remington Rand, an office equipment firm. After Remington Rand took over EMCC, the freedom and “gender-neutrality” of EMCC was threatened.
Remington Rand sex-typed jobs, pushing out many female programmers; however, the only effect that this had on Grace Hopper was that she received more work. Apparently, she was able to retain her position due to her experience and strong presence. However, Beyer depicts this transition as the most trying period of her life.
During this period of career uncertainty, Hopper’s alcohol addiction returned. She was arrested for disorderly conduct and public drunkenness in November 1949 and placed in a hospital for treatment; she threatened suicide several times. Her friend, Edmund Berkeley, wrote her a letter that he copied to many of her friends, arguing that everyone was already aware of her problem. However, it is the excerpt of the letter that Beyer includes:
What are the sources of these dammed-up emotions, worry prohibitions, and proud self-imposed laws? These ways of behaving are chunks of immaturity, of infantile habits, baby ways of dealing with grown-up situations. The biggest chunk of all the immaturities I think is your determination to be your own boss, decide for yourself, and to hell with doing anything you don’t choose to do. Oh, I don’t mean that you are consistently head-strong; of course you often do things you do not choose to do, but you do them in cases where you have not involved all your personality, all of yourself. The biggest chunk of immaturity I believe probably derives from revolt against family constraints while you were young, coupled with your innate tendency to be stubborn (206).
This letter is very revealing about perceptions of Hopper navigating a male world. Her mental health issues are treated with no compassion by Berkeley, but rather as a symptom of abandoning her socially prescribed feminine role. The “revolt against family constraints”, appears to offer additional insight to her divorce; though her marriage was secure, perhaps Hopper felt confined by her husband.
Beyer asserts that her drinking was a crutch for the many obstacles that she had to overcome in life, including earning a doctorate at Yale, being one of the first female Navy officers, the third programmer on the first modern computer, the senior manager at a startup company, and a divorcee at a time when divorce was more unusual. However, the reader never learns whether Hopper overcame her alcohol addiction. Hopper was very productive throughout the 1950s, so she was apparently able to function, but Beyer never again provides real insight into her personal struggles or relationships with her friends and family.
Hopper’s Accomplishments
Hopper believed that computer code should be written in English rather than purely mathematical symbols as some suggested; she played a crucial role in developing the language COBOL which is used today. COBOL Code Execution on a Graphical User Interface & 1970s era COBOL punch cards.
Several more chapters are devoted to Hopper’s contributions to the development of COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language). Beyer attempts to debunk the myth that Hopper was the “sole” creator of COBOL, and instead, portrays its development as a more collaborative process, in which Hopper was an advocate and leader. Remington Rand did little to market UNIVAC and set low quotas for production; however, Hopper was determined to get the computer to “program” itself and convinced Remington Rand to create the Automatic Programming Department, which she directed. She helped develop the compiler, a “master program” that would automatically call on a “library” of subroutines (pieces of code) stored in the computer to save the programmer time.
Hopper led the development of several compilers. Hopper believed in collaboration and the free exchange of information between programmers, often taking suggestions from others to improve a compiler. By the late 1950s, several compilers had been developed, and the costs of computation were increasing. Hopper, in collaboration with the Department of Defense and other industry leaders, held the Conference on Data Systems of Languages in order to create a long-term, standardized, machine-independent computer language. Hopper advocated for a language written in English rather than algebraic symbols, in order to increase the accessibility of the language.
FLOW-MATIC, which Hopper led in its development, became the blueprint for COBOL. Many predicted the demise of COBOL, complaining on its verbosity, redundancy, and lack of elegance, though Beyer suggests that they did not like reporting to a committee consisting of many women programmers, including Betty Holberton, Jean Sammet, Mary Hawes, and Nora Taylor.
Computer programming gradually became more “masculine”. When Mark I was developed, there was no job description for “programmer” and no gender division; in fact, many women were recruited to work with computers because of the lack of men during wartime. However, as computing became more commercialized in the 1950s, it became an effectively masculine field. In fact, Hopper heavily pushed for the universal adoption of COBOL and attempted to overcome these stereotypes by teaching the 19-year-old, pretty blonde Marilyn Mealey how to use COBOL and publicizing it in the magazine Popular Electronics [I tried and failed to find a picture of this article].
Hopper’s Legacy
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, was founded in 1994 by Dr. Anita Borg and Dr. Telle Whitney, to celebrate and amplify women’s voices in tech.
The last chapter details the remaining thirty-two years of her life, citing numerous awards as well as several positions that she held. It would have been interesting to learn more about how this “myth” of Grace Hopper as “a heroic pioneer who was single-handedly responsible for the invention of computer programming’ (3) had developed during her lifetime, though he asserts that other tech giants like Steve Jobs [Note—Jobs couldn’t code!!!] or Bill Gates have overshadowed her legacy as a pioneer of computer programming. Beyer, however, acknowledges that Hopper was more than just a “programmer”; she was a businesswoman, naval officer, and academic. She also encouraged innovation and personally created a network of experienced programmers, almost single-handedly standardizing programming to make it more accessible for the lay person and practical applications in industry; she envisioned a world where everyone would be able to interact with a computer.
My 2025 Take and Evaluating my Own work
It’s interesting that Beyer felt the need to continually highlight Hopper’s supposed shortcomings in the book, rather than her amazing accomplishments. However, it was interesting that the book openly discussed her addiction and mental health struggles. The book did not take a particularly sensitive or nuanced approach to Hopper’s mental health struggles, which would be ripe for a feminist evaluation. I assume that some people would refrain from discussing her mental health struggles in order to mythologize Hopper’s accomplishments. Presumably, activists may not want to ‘discourage’ women from pursuing STEM degrees but, not discussing them does a disservice to those struggling.
I could not find much more literature or discussion on Grace Hopper’s personal life and difficulties. Overall, the biography did not sugarcoat the toxic work environment of tech, nor the mental toll it can take on its employees. While tech is often glamorized, this was a pretty disturbing book and probably shaped my perspectives and attitudes towards the tech world from an early age.
It’s interesting that I as a 22-year-old undergrad picked up on so many of the themes that I discuss and contemplate now; toxic tech environments, sexist evaluations of female historical figures in STEM, the emotional labor women often assume in the workplace, mental health challenges for women in STEM, the difficulty for women to navigate a romantic relationship and career.
I am really impressed by my writing quality of this essay. I got an A and praise from the professor, but my writing confidence really faltered in the following years as a graduate student when professors kept telling me “I couldn’t write”.
Little did I know that at 22 I would go onto be a pretty good programmer and data scientist. I was really inspired by Hopper and felt excited about embarking on scientific discovery and projects that would contribute something to the world.
As a woman who also works in tech, this was a very interesting read. Thanks for sharing!