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Margaret Hamilton
Leading the team that developed onboard flight software for NASA’s Apollo missions.
Apollo 11 software · Higher Order Software
- Born
- 17 August 1936
- Birthplace
- Paoli, United States
More people
Margaret Hamilton
Hamilton directed software engineering at MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory. Her team’s work on reliability and recovery helped spacecraft computers cope with unexpected conditions during the Moon missions.
Early life
Mathematics studies
Graduated from Earlham College in 1958 with a mathematics degree and a philosophy minor.
Early programming
Began working on weather software at MIT before moving into air-defence computing.
Career
- 1961–1963
SAGE project
Worked on software for an air-defence system at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
- 1960s
Apollo team
Joined the Instrumentation Laboratory and came to lead its software engineering division.
- 1986
Hamilton Technologies
Founded a company focused on preventing errors through systems design.
Contributions
Apollo 11 software
Her team’s software helped the guidance computer prioritise critical tasks during the landing.
Higher Order Software
Co-founded a business extending ideas about reliable software development.
Universal Systems Language
Developed a formal approach to designing systems and their interactions.
Beyond computing
Work and motherhood
Sometimes brought her young daughter to the laboratory while working on Apollo software.
National recognition
Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 for her Apollo contributions.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Institutional biography and contributions ↗Photo: Daphne Weld Nichols. CC BY-SA 3.0 · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
