Margaret Hamilton (software engineer)

For other people named Margaret Hamilton, see Margaret Hamilton.
Margaret Hamilton
Hamilton in 1995
Born
Margaret Elaine Heafield

(1936-08-17) August 17, 1936 (age 88)
Paoli, Indiana, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Michigan
Earlham College (BA)
OccupationSoftware engineer
Spouses
  • James Cox Hamilton
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1958; div. 1967)​
  • Dan Lickly
    ​
    (m. 1969)​
Children1
RelativesJames Cox Chambers (former son-in-law)
AwardsPresidential Medal of Freedom

Margaret Elaine Hamilton (née Heafield; born August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist. She was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program. She later founded two software companies—Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies in 1986, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hamilton has published more than 130 papers, proceedings, and reports, about sixty projects, and six major programs. She coined the term "software engineering", stating "I began to use the term 'software engineering' to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process."[1][2][3]

On November 22, 2016, Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from president Barack Obama for her work leading to the development of on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo Moon missions.[4]

  1. ^ Cameron, Lori (October 5, 2018). "First Software Engineer". IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved March 25, 2023.
  2. ^ Thereon, Bradley, ed. (2003). "The NASA Heritage Of Creativity" (PDF). 2003 Annual Report of the NASA Inventions & Contributions Board. NASA. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 29, 2016. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  3. ^ Brock, David C.; Hamilton, Margaret H. (April 13, 2017). Hamilton, Margaret oral history. Computer History Museum. 102738243. Archived from the original on November 14, 2023. Retrieved March 25, 2023.
  4. ^ "President Obama Names Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom". whitehouse.gov. November 16, 2016. Retrieved July 26, 2022.