Margaret Hamilton
American NASA scientist and mathematician
- Fame56.8
- Momentum0.0
- Academics rank#59
Source-basedFalling
- Fame56.8
- Momentum0.0
- Academics rank#59
- Wikipedia27.6K
Lived 1936–1985, aged 49United States
United StatesSummary
Updated 2026-06-11
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.
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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 award…
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Source confidence65.0
Completeness75.0
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