A Long Career

At the end of World War II Grace Hopper 's request to transfer to the regular Navy was denied due to her being two years older than the cutoff age of 38. So she continued to serve in the Navy Reserve, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract. She stayed  at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949 when she became an employee of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (and subsequently Remington Rand) as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the UNIVAC I while still serving as a Naval reservist. In 1966 when she turned 60, she was retired in accordance with Navy regulations, but the Navy still needed her and seven months later she was asked to take on the job of standardizing the Navy's use of languages and returned to active duty. 

She retired for a second time at age 65 and was again called back, this time with the rank of Captain, to continue in the role of  publicist - giving lectures with her own estimate being that she gave 200 lectures per year.

In 1985, by which time she was a Commodore, MIT Lincoln Laboratory invited her to deliver a lecture on the future of computing, which is a wonderful example of her wit and wisdom and certainly worth watching. The reproduction quality is abysmal, but the content is great and includes the famous Nanosecond demonstration at 45:06. 

Grqace Hopper retired from the Navy for the last time in 1984. At her retirement ceremony, held in Boston aboard the USS Constitution,  she reminded the assembled sailors that she was told at 40 that she was too old for the navy and yet she had remained in uniform for the subsequent 40 years. At the time, aged 79, she was the oldest serving member of the Navy. At this event was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by the Department of Defense.

Still Working In Computer Industry

Although aged 79 when she retired from the Navy, Grace Hopper started a new career in public relations as a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation. This involved her in delivering lectures about the early days of computers, her career, and on efforts that computer vendors could take to make life easier for their users. Although no longer a serving officer, she always wore her Navy full dress uniform to these lectures.

She was still working in this capacity when she died in 1992, certainly as the longest serving computer enthusiast of her day. 

Honours and awards

In 1969 the Data Processing Management Association selected her as their first "man" of the year. Something that I'm sure would have amused her as she held the view that women were in general better programmers than men! She had already, in 1964, been awarded the Society of Women Engineers Achievement Award:

"In recognition of her significant contributions to the burgeoning computer industry as an engineering manager and originator of automatic programming systems."  

and was made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society in 1973, the first woman and the first American ever to be so honored. Also in 1973 she was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

Hopper gained the ACM Distinguished Service Award in 1983 and also had the distinction of having a prize named after her. Established in 1971, the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award is currently worth $35,000, funded by Microsoft, and recognizes a single recent major technical or service contribution made by an individual aged 35 or younger.

Her later years brought more recognition for her many achievements. It was Grace Hopper who was the first to become a Fellow of the Computer History Museum in 1987. In 1991 she was awarded the National Medal of Technology and in the same year was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994. 

Another acknowlegement of fame came on December 9th, 2013, when a Google Doodle remebered the 107th birthday of the "Mother of Cobol", with code demonstrating the very wordy characteristic of the code: 

At the end of the animation, notice the nice touch of a "bug" that flies out of the machine. 

Being posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barak Obama in 2016, which served as an indication of how strong her influence remained almost a quarter of a century after her death.

An important part of Grace Hopper's legacy is that of being a successful woman in an industry dominated by men. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference is an annual event that is the recognized as as the world's largest gathering of women in Computing. Now presented by AnitaB.org and the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery), it was inaugurated by the Anitia Borg Institute in 1994 in order to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. 

Teacher and Role Model

Grace Hopper was chosen as the personality to embody the aims of Computer Science Education Week and its timing of the second week in December means that it the event always coincides with her birthday.

Throughout her career Grace Hopper was concerned in promoting programming skills to young people. She is quoted by her biographer Lynn Gilbert as saying:

The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, "Do you think we can do this?" I say, "Try it." And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances."

Related Articles

Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (book review)

Google Doodle Celebrates Grace Hopper's Birthday

Grace Hopper Honored With Presidential Medal of Freedom    

Computer Languages by Committee - the 1960s         

On this day in 1959 - COBOL Committee formed

Howard Aiken and the Harvard Mark I       

Grace Hopper & Computer Science Education Week

Grace Hopper - Building On Her Legacy 

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