J. Presper Eckert and Grace Hopper.

WHO?: GRACE MURRAY

Grace Murray Hopper, 1906 - 1992

Grace Murray Hopper was one of the first computer programmers. She left her job as professor of mathematics at Vassar College to join the Navy during World War II. She worked on early computers at Harvard University and later joined Eckert and Mauchly to write programs for UNIVAC.

Her best-known contribution to computing was the compiler, a program that translates English language instructions into the machine language the computer uses. Before compilers, programmers had to program in the binary language of whatever machine they used.