Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017 - 40

VASSAR YESTERDAY
The Legacy of Grace Hopper
The world is waking up to the contributions of Grace Murray Hopper '28,
computer pioneer, Navy rear admiral, and former Vassar assistant professor.
It's about time ...

O

n the 11th floor of a building
in lower Manhattan, 10 pairs
of computer coders sit typing at
monitors. They're three days
into the Grace Hopper Program at Fullstack
Academy, a software engineering boot camp
for women and people who identify as
female. The program, which launched in
January 2016, is so successful that it only
charges tuition for participants once they
secure jobs. No one has gotten a freebie yet.
Hopper, the program's namesake, has
been called the "queen of code" and "mother
of computing." The 1928 Vassar alumna and
former faculty member was one of the
world's first computer programmers,
working as part of a Navy effort on Howard
Aiken's Mark 1 calculating machine during
World War II. She later became one of the
few women to earn the rank of rear admiral,
and when she retired in 1986, she was one of
the longest-serving officers in Navy history
and the oldest-serving officer in the United
States Armed Forces. She died in 1992 at 85.
Hopper's contributions have gained
renewed attention in recent years. In
November 2016, President Barack Obama
said in his State of the Union address, "That
spirit of discovery is in our DNA. America
is Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers
and George Washington Carver. America is
Grace Hopper." That November, he awarded
her a posthumous Presidential Medal of
Freedom, the highest civilian honor. And in
February, after people demanded that Yale
remove John C. Calhoun, the 19th-century
statesman who promoted slavery, from the
name of a residential college, the university
announced it would rename the building
after Hopper, effective July 1.

40

SPRING/SuMMER 2017



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017

Contents
Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017 - Cover1
Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017 - Cover2
Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017 - Contents
Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017 - 2
Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017 - 3
Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017 - 4
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Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017 - Cover3
Vassar Quarterly - Spring/Summer 2017 - Cover4
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