The legendary Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, credited with pioneering the first practical compiler, and a major contributor to the development of Cobol, died in her sleep on New Year’s Day. She was 85. She joined the Navy in 1943 and worked on programming the Mark I calculator. Two years later, she found the first bug, a moth attracted by the glowing valves of the Mark I, which caused it to malfunction: she always said she still had that bug, pressed in her workbook. She worked at J Presper Eckert and John Mauchly’s eponymous company on the development of the Univac I in 1949; Eckert-Mauchly Corp was later acquired by Remington Rand Corp, one of the predecessors of Unisys Corp. In 1969 she was elected the Data Processing Management Association’s first Man of the Year and was promoted from Commander to Rear Admiral in the Naval Reserve in 1983. A slight, trim figure, invariably in her naval uniform, at major industry gatherings, she finally retired from the Navy in 1986, and joined Digital Equipment Corp as a senior consultant, a post that she held at the time of her death.
