When considering famous military officers or pioneers of computing, a woman like Grace Hopper typically doesn’t come to mind. However, she served in the Navy for half of her life and had a major impact in computing.

Elizabeth Dickason chronicled the trailblazer’s life and achievements in an article on About.com. Hopper was the first female to receive a doctorate in Mathematics from Yale University in 1934 and taught the subject at Vasser College until World War II when she joined the Naval Reserve. It was with the Navy that she designed the MARK computers with Howard Aiken at Harvard. The first system, called MARK I, was a 5-ton, 55-foot long system, used to calculate ballistics for the Navy. The computer used 500 miles of copper wire, 1400 rotary dials and took anywhere from 3 to 5 seconds to complete a multiplication operation.

Following WWII, Hopper joined Sperry Rand Corporation where she helped develop the FLOW-MATIC language used in their UNIVAC computers. Even more significant was her role in developing the Bomarc system, which is now referred to as COBOL, (Common-Business-Oriented Language). She was famously quoted as saying “It really came about because I couldn’t balance my checkbook.”

The contribution gave way to nicknames including Grandma COBOL and Amazing Grace. Her pioneering efforts in computing were made at a time before software was considered something that could be patented, so she never had an application or development tool with her name on it.

Since the MARK I, which could process roughly three calculations a second, compute power increased exponentially in Hopper’s lifetime. This became difficult when trying to equate the speed of microseconds and nanoseconds; so she found clever ways to explain the differences to other officers using pieces of wire and rope.

After a short retirement from the Naval Reserve in 1966, she returned to active duty in 1967 for an assignment that ended up getting extended until 1986. Hopper frequently toured the country, delivering lectures at colleges, universities, seminars and forums. Showing a passion for progression and innovation, she believed the phrase “We’ve always done it this way” displayed an extremely damaging thought process. In 1982, 60 Minutes ran a piece on Hopper where she explained that the computer revolution was just beginning and current technology was like the Model T.

Her achievements earned recognition from legislators and the Navy. The Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station, in San Diego, used her name for a datacenter built in 1985. Also, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) in Berkeley named their new Cray XE6 supercomputer “Hopper.”

She died on New Years Day, 1992 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.