Margaret Hamilton

Margaret Heafield Hamilton (English: Margaret Heafield Hamilton, August 17, 1936 - September 30, 2026) was an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and entrepreneur. She served as the Director of the Software Engineering Department of the MIT Instrument Laboratory, helping the laboratory develop the flight software for the spacecraft in the Apollo program. The programs she wrote were designed to prevent crashes to the greatest extent, thus preventing the Apollo 11 moon landing program from aborting. In 1986, she founded Hamilton Technologies, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and served as CEO. The company develops systems and software engineering around a common systems language, a concept based on Hamilton's "Development Before the Fact" design principles. To date, Hamilton has published more than 130 papers, conference proceedings and reports, covering more than 60 projects and 6 major topics in which she participated. She coined the term "software engineering," noting that "I began to use the term 'software engineering' to distinguish it from hardware and other types of engineering, but to view each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process." On November 22, 2016, Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama for his contribution in developing airborne flight software for NASA's Apollo lunar missions.