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Grace Hopper
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== Early life and education == Grace Brewster Murray was born in [[New York City]]. She was the eldest of three children. Her parents, Walter Fletcher Murray and Mary Campbell Van Horne, were of [[Scottish people|Scottish]] and [[Dutch people|Dutch]] descent, and attended [[West End Collegiate Church]].<ref name="Williams">{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Kathleen |year=2004 |title=Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KKmiw-_2gYIC&q=%22Grace+Hooper%22+and+military+ranks&pg=PR9 |language=en-US |location=Annapolis, MD |publisher=Naval Institute Press |isbn=978-1-61251-265-5}}</ref> Her great-grandfather, Alexander Wilson Russell, an admiral in the US Navy, fought in the [[Battle of Mobile Bay]] during the [[American Civil War|Civil War]].<ref name="Williams"/>{{rp|2โ3}} Grace was very curious as a child; this was a lifelong trait. At the age of seven, she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked and dismantled seven alarm clocks before her mother realized what she was doing (she was then limited to one clock).<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Dickason |first1=Elizabeth |url=http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_Grace_Murray_Hopper.htm |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120712220654/http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_Grace_Murray_Hopper.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=July 12, 2012 |title=Looking Back: Grace Murray Hopper's Younger Years |journal=Chips |date=April 1992 }}</ref> Later in life, she was known for keeping a clock that ran backward, she explained, "Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counterclockwise."<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-03-29 |title=Women's History Month: Which Women Engineers Have Succeeded by Breaking the Rules? โ All Together |url=https://alltogether.swe.org/2021/03/womens-history-month-which-women-engineers-have-exceeded-by-breaking-the-rules/ |access-date=2023-10-25 |language=en-US}}</ref> For her [[University-preparatory school|preparatory school]] education, she attended the [[Wardlaw-Hartridge School|Hartridge School]] in [[Plainfield, New Jersey]]. Grace was initially rejected for early admission to [[Vassar College]] at age 16 (because her test scores in Latin were too low), but she was admitted the next year. She graduated [[Phi Beta Kappa]] from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master's degree at [[Yale University]] in 1930. In 1930, Grace Murray married [[New York University]] professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906โ1976); they divorced in 1945.<ref name="greenladuke09">{{cite book |last1=Green |first1=Judy |author1-link=Judy Green (mathematician) |last2=LaDuke |first2=Jeanne |author2-link=Jeanne LaDuke |year=2009 |title=Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's |title-link= Pioneering Women in American Mathematics |location=Providence, RI |publisher=American Mathematical Society |isbn=978-0-8218-4376-5}} Biography on pp. 281โ289 of the [https://www.ams.org/bookpages/hmath-34-PioneeringWomen.pdf Supplementary Material] at [https://www.ams.org/publications/authors/books/postpub/hmath-34 AMS]</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Prof. Vincent Hopper of N.YU., Literature Teacher, Dead at 69 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/01/21/archives/prof-vincent-hopper-of-nyu-literature-teacher-dead-at-69.html |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |date=January 21, 1976 |access-date=February 14, 2018}}</ref> She did not marry again and retained his surname. In 1934, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale<ref name="NWHM">{{cite web| url=https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/grace-hopper| title=Grace Hopper | access-date=July 11, 2018| publisher=National Women's History Museum| website=womenshistory.org}}</ref> under the direction of [[รystein Ore]].<ref name="greenladuke09"/><ref>Though some books, including Kurt Beyer's ''Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age'', reported that Hopper was the first woman to earn a Yale Ph.D. in mathematics, the first of ten women before 1934 was Charlotte Cynthia Barnum (1860โ1934). {{Cite news |last=Murray |first=Margaret A. M. |date=MayโJune 2010 |title=The first lady of math? |periodical=Yale Alumni Magazine |volume=73 |issue=5 |pages=5โ6 |issn=0044-0051}}</ref> Her [[dissertation]], "New Types of Irreducibility Criteria",<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201903/hopper_thesis.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200218163518/https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201903/hopper_thesis.pdf |archive-date=2020-02-18 |url-status=live |last=Murray Hopper |first=Grace |year=1934 |title=New Types of Irreducibility Criteria |website=American Mathematical Society |location=New Haven, CT |publisher=Yale University |type=Thesis }}</ref> was published that same year.<ref>G. M. Hopper and O. Ore, "New types of irreducibility criteria", ''Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.'' 40 (1934) 216 {{cite journal |title=New types of irreducibility criteria |journal=Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society |volume=40 |issue=3 |pages=209โ234 |doi=10.1090/S0002-9904-1934-05818-X |year=1934 |doi-access=free}}</ref> She began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.<ref name=Ogilvie>{{cite book|last=Ogilvie|first=Marilyn|author-link=Marilyn Ogilvie|title=The biographical dictionary of women in science: pioneering lives from ancient times to the mid-20th century|year=2000|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|isbn=978-0-415-92040-7|author2= Joy Harvey|author2-link=Joy Harvey|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I4hUAAAAMAAJ&q=hopper}}{{verify source|reason=doesn't seem to support those dates|date=November 2013}}</ref>
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