Grace Hopper was the one who popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages. COBOL, a high-level language used widely by businesses today, was the result of this thought process.
Hopper created a compiler that converted English terms into language that computers could understand, followed by MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC, compiler-based languages that were only expanded by COBOL.
Hopper’s idea to create a programming language based on English words led to a language with contributions from such developers as Jean E. Sammet.