This Day in History

December 9, 1906

Computer Pioneer Grace Hopper is Born

Grace Murray Hopper, one of the first women to work on the computer, is born in New York City. Hopper, a rear admiral in U.S. Navy, did significant work on the Harvard Mark II, where she discovered the first computer bug -- a moth -- and coined the term to mean a problem with a program. Hopper went on to develop the first compiler, A-0, and the programming language COBOL. She died on January 1, 1992

Grace Hopper was honored by having the most modern ship in the U.S. Navy named after her, the U.S.S. Hopper, launched in mid-1997.

December 9, 1916

Cryptologist and Statistician Good is Born

Irving John Jack Good is born in London, England. He obtained a PhD in mathematics from Cambridge under the supervision of G. H. Hardy in 1938. During W.W.II he worked on both the Enigma and Teleprinter encrypting machines with Alan Turing at Bletchley