# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/margaret-hamilton
# Generated: 2026-08-31T22:26:49.595Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/margaret-hamilton"
name: "Margaret Hamilton"
slug: "margaret-hamilton"
description: "She wrote the code that landed humans on the Moon — then had to invent the phrase \"software engineering\" because in 1969 no one took programming seriously enough to call it engineering at all."
tagline: "American NASA scientist and mathematician"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Margaret_Hamilton_1995.jpg?width=1200"
gender: "female"
country:
  name: "United States"
  isoCode: "US"
category:
  name: "Scientists"
  slug: "scientists"
profileType:
  name: "Scientist"
  slug: "scientist"
  entityType: "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q39631"
birthDate: "1936-08-17"
deathDate: "1985-05-16"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           56.8
  momentum:             0
  historical:           24.992124
  currentAttention:     0
  sourceConfidence:     65
  profileCompleteness:  75
  trendDirection:       "FALLING"
ranks:
  global:   null
  country:  null
  category: null
tags:
  - name: "Executives"
    slug: "executives"
  - name: "Academic"
    slug: "academic"
  - name: "Mathematics"
    slug: "mathematics"
  - name: "Entrepreneurship"
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  - name: "United States"
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  - name: "Americas"
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  - name: "20th Century"
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platforms:
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    url:       "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002121/"
    handle:    "nm0002121"
sources:
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    title: "Wikipedia"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Wikidata"
    type:  "WIKIDATA"
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    title: "Pantheon 2.0"
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    title: "Маргарет Хамилтън"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Margaret Hamilton"
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    title: "Margaret Hamilton"
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    title: "Margaret Hamilton"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Margaret Hamilton"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Margaret Hamilton (tieteilijä)"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Margaret Hamilton (scientifique)"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Margaret Hamilton"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Margaret Hamilton (científica)"
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    title: "Մարգարետ Համիլթոն (գիտնական)"
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    title: "Margaret Heafield Hamilton"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Margaret Hamilton"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Wikiquote"
    type:  "WEBSITE"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "مارجريت هاميلتون"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"

# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Margaret Hamilton directed MIT's Software Engineering Division in the 1960s, leading the team that built the on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo Guidance Computer. The work demanded a new rigor: one error could strand astronauts in space, so she imposed standards no one else was using and coined the term "software engineering" to force the field into legitimacy. After Apollo, she founded Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies a decade later, both in Cambridge. She published more than 130 papers across sixty projects and six major programs. In 2016, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the Apollo software that made the Moon landings possible.