kids encyclopedia robot

Grace Murray Hopper Award facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
Commodore Grace M. Hopper, USN (covered)
Grace Murray Hopper

The Grace Murray Hopper Award is a special prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This award celebrates computer experts who have made a really important discovery or helped the computer world a lot, especially when they are 35 years old or younger. It's named after Grace Hopper, who was a brilliant computer scientist and a Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy. She was a true pioneer in the early days of computers! The award has been given out since 1971.

Who Was Grace Hopper?

Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992) was an amazing American computer scientist and a high-ranking officer in the U.S. Navy. She was one of the first people to work on computers. She helped create the first computer programming languages. These languages allow us to "talk" to computers and tell them what to do.

Grace Hopper believed that computer programs should be written in a way that was more like English. This made it easier for more people to use computers. She is famous for helping to develop COBOL, which is a very important programming language used for business. She also helped invent the idea of "debugging" a computer. This means finding and fixing problems in computer code. She even found a real moth stuck in a computer, which was causing a problem! That's where the term "bug" in computer science comes from.

Grace Hopper was a true visionary. She saw how computers could change the world. She inspired many people to get into computer science. The Grace Murray Hopper Award honors her spirit of innovation and her contributions to technology.

Award Winners

The Grace Murray Hopper Award recognizes young computer professionals. They must have made a single, very important technical or service contribution to computing. This contribution must have happened when they were 35 years old or younger. Many famous computer scientists have received this award over the years.

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Premio Grace Murray Hopper para niños

  • List of computer-related awards
  • List of computer science awards
kids search engine
All content from Kiddle encyclopedia articles (including the article images and facts) can be freely used under Attribution-ShareAlike license, unless stated otherwise. Cite this article:
Grace Murray Hopper Award Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.