Grace Hopper
<person> US Navy Rear Admiral Grace Brewster Hopper (1906-12-09 to 1992-01-01), née Grace Brewster Murray.
Hopper is believed to have concieved the concept of the
compiler with the
A-0 in 1952.
She also developed the first commercial
high-level language, which eventually evolved into
COBOL.
She worked on the Mark I computer with Howard Aiken and with BINAC in 1949.
She is credited with having coined the term "debug", and the adage "it is always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" (with various wordings), which has been the guiding principle in
sysadmin decisions ever since.
See also the entries
debug and
bug.
Hopper is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1994, the US Navy named a new ship, the guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper (http://www.hopper.navy.mil/), after her.
