Computing Pioneers

Person

Margaret Hamilton

Portrait of Margaret Hamilton
Portrait of Margaret Hamilton

Led the team that wrote the Apollo guidance software and popularized the term 'software engineering' to make the discipline respectable. Her error-handling design saved the Apollo 11 landing when the computer overloaded three minutes from the surface.

Photo: NASA, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Worked at

  • MIT

    to: 1976-01-01 · from: 1963-01-01 · role: Director, Software Engineering Division, Instrumentation Lab