Hamilton, Margaret (1936-…), is an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and businesswoman. She coined the term software engineer to describe her work. Software engineering is the field of engineering focusing on writing software (programs) for computers . Hamilton is best known for writing programs for the Apollo space missions. She became a pioneering computer programmer at a time when women had limited opportunities in engineering and mathematics and their achievements were seldom recognized.
Margaret Elaine Heafield was born Aug. 17, 1936, in Paoli, in southern Indiana. After graduating high school, she began studying mathematics at the University of Michigan. She later transferred to Earlham College, a liberal arts college in Richmond, in western Indiana. She graduated in 1958 with a major in mathematics and a minor in philosophy. Margaret met James Cox Hamilton at Earlham, and they married after she graduated, in June 1958. Margaret taught high school mathematics while James completed his chemistry degree at Earlham. The couple then moved to Boston, where James enrolled in Brandeis University. Margaret took a job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) , in Cambridge, working in the meteorology department. Meteorology is the study of weather. She soon started on a new project writing software that the U.S. Air Force would use to search for and identify enemy planes.
In 1961, Hamilton began working in MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory on the Apollo space program. In this position, she wrote and managed the software that the Apollo craft used to navigate and to land on the moon. Hamilton’s software contributed to the success of the mission by prioritizing tasks needed for landing over general system tasks.
Hamilton founded the software companies Higher Order Software, in 1976, and Hamilton Technologies, in 1986. In 2003, Hamilton was awarded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Exceptional Space Act Award for her contributions to the Apollo program. In 2016, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Hamilton with the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the country’s highest civilian honor, for her work on the Apollo missions.
