Let me introduce you to “Amazing Grace”,
Please don’t ever forget this face
A computer programmer, US Navy Commodore,
She’d a hunger for knowledge, a thirst to explore.
She was a teacher at Vassar, but joined the Naval Reserve,
During World War II, she thought it her duty to serve.
One of the first programmers in computer history,
She was determined to make them less of a mystery,
She introduced the computer term ‘de-bugging’,
When a moth tried to give her computer a mugging.
She set her clock backwards, which some might find strange,
But this was to challenge her students being allergic to change.
During her lifetime she was awarded 40 global degrees,
To honour her brilliance and her expertise.
She tried to retire twice and finally did so at eighty,
At the end of a career that was stellar and weighty.
United States Navy Admiral Grace Hopper (1906–1992) was one of the first programmers in the history of computers. Grace tried to retire twice, in 1966 and 1971, but both times she was recalled to active duty indefinitely. She was promoted to commodore in 1983, a title that was later renamed to “rear admiral, lower half”, and finally retired for the last time in 1986 at the age of 80. In the course of her lifetime, Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities around the world, along with numerous awards and honors including:

• First winner of “Computer Science Man of the Year” award from the Data Processing Management Association in 1969
• First person from the United States and the first woman from any country to be made Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society in 1973
• First woman to receive the National Medal of Technology as an individual in 1991
•  At her retirement she was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat award possible by the Department of Defense.