~ + Epic CS Superheroes + ~

Grace Hopper

Born on December 9, 1906 in New York and later passing away on January 1, 1992 in Arlington, Virginia, Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was a remarkable figure in computer science history. In 1928, she received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics at Vassar college and later received her PhD and Masters in mathematics at Yale University. Hopper was an advocate for creating word-based programming languages so computers can be more user-friendly, so she worked towards developing COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language). During the 1970’s, this language was used extensively throughout the computer science industry. Additionally, she was part of the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University. Here, she programmed the Mark I, one of the earliest electromechanical computers, and created machine instructions on tape. She even wrote the user manual for the device, which was over 500 pages! Something unique about Hopper was that she was a naval officer and a rear admiral in the U.S Armed Forces. During the later years of her life, Hopper earned several incredible awards, like the National Medal of Technology in 1991. Grace Hopper is and will always serve as an inspiration for computer scientists.

Bibliography: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Grace-Hopper | https://news.yale.edu/2017/02/10/grace-murray-hopper-1906-1992-legacy-innovation-and-service | https://president.yale.edu/biography-grace-murray-hopper

Timothy Berners-Lee

Timothy Berners-Lee, a renowned British computer scientist, was born in London, England on June 8, 1955. In 1976, he graduated from Oxford University with a first-class Bachelor of Arts degree in physics. Berners-Lee began working at CERN (European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland), where he created a program called "Enquire". It could store information in files that included "links" using hypertext. Of the myriad of accomplishments throughout his life, Berners-Lee's most well-known is inventing the World Wide Web in 1989. This was used for conveniently sharing information through hyperlinks that anyone with the internet could access anytime. This, along with the establishment of the World Web Consortium, still operates today. Over the course of Berners-Lee's career, he has earned incredible awards for his remarkable work, like the National Academy of Engineering’s prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2007. An additional interesting fact about the man is that he came from a family of computer scientists, with his parents both having worked on the first commercially built computer, the Ferranti Mark 1. It is no surprise that Timothy Berners-Lee had earned such brilliance from these people.

Bibliography: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tim-Berners-Lee | https://www.internethalloffame.org/official-biography-tim-berners-lee/ | https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/tim-berners

Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr (November 9, 1914-January 19, 2000) was a woman of brilliant talent, both within the enterainment world and the CS industry. Lamarr did not have a formal academic career nor held any advanced degrees. Despite this, innovation, technology, and science seemed to have piqued her interest, considering she'd tinker with gadgets in her free time. In fact, later in her life, she met George Antheil, and together they both created a communications device that would constantly change radio frequencies. It originally was aimed to be used during WWII to improve military security, but it was not acknowledged that well. However, decades later, her invention was used as the foundation for today's modern technology, such as bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS. Hedy Lamarr truly sets an example of an excellent CS figure.