In 1982, David Letterman asked Dr. Hopper how she knew so much about computers. She replied, “I didn’t. It was the first one.” Throughout her career, Hopper worked on the Mark I computer at United States Naval Reserve’s Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, one of the earliest working computers, as well its later generations Mark II and III. She also led the team that invented COBOL, a language which is still used today. She is also known to have coined the term “debug” to rid a computer of glitches after lifting an actual moth from the inner workings of a Mark II computer. Hopper earned her PhD in mathematics from Yale on top of a Bachelors degree from Vassar, and enlisted in the Navy at age 37. She received the National Medal of Technology, the Data Processing Management Association’s “computer sciences man of the year” award, and the Defense Distinguished Service medal.
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