Editing Grace Hopper (section)

=== World War II ===
[[File:Harvard Mark I sign-up.agr.jpg|thumb|Hopper's name on a duty roster for the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard, which built and operated the [[Harvard Mark I|Mark I]]]]
Hopper tried to be commissioned in the Navy early in [[World War II]], however she was turned down. At age 34, she was too old to enlist and her weight-to-height ratio was too low. She was also denied on the basis that her job as a mathematician and mathematics professor at Vassar College was valuable to the war effort.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thocp.net/biographies/hopper_grace.html|title=Grace Hopper|website=www.thocp.net|access-date=2016-12-12}}</ref> During the war in 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve; she was one of many women who volunteered to serve in the [[WAVES]].

She had to get an exemption to be commissioned; she was {{convert|15|lb}} below the Navy minimum weight of {{convert|120|lb}}. She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at [[Smith College]] in [[Northampton, Massachusetts]]. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the [[Bureau of Ships]] Computation Project at [[Harvard University]] as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the [[Harvard Mark I|Mark I computer]] programming staff headed by [[Howard H. Aiken]].

Hopper and Aiken co-authored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her advanced age of 38. She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard.<ref name="KBW">{{cite book |last=Williams |first=Kathleen Broome |title=Improbable Warriors: Women Scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II |year=2001 |publisher=Naval Institute Press |location=Annapolis, Maryland |isbn=978-1-55750-961-1}}</ref>

[[File: Grace Murray Hopper, in her office in Washington DC, 1978, ©Lynn Gilbert.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Hopper in a computer room in [[Washington, D.C.]], 1978, photographed by [[Lynn Gilbert]]]]