$ Margaret Hamilton
1936–
Software engineering leader
Led Apollo Guidance Computer software; coined “software engineering”; rigorous reliability practices.
apolloreliabilitysystems
$ contributions
- Directed on‑board flight software development for the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) at MIT IL
- Engineered priority scheduling and asynchronous error detection/recovery to maintain real‑time guarantees
- Designed alarm handling that enabled Apollo 11 to land safely despite 1201/1202 overloads
- Coined and championed “software engineering” as a rigorous engineering discipline
- Institutionalized fault‑tolerant design, human‑in‑the‑loop safeguards, and comprehensive simulation/testing
$ awards
- NASA Exceptional Space Act Award (2003)
- Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016)
“There was no second chance. We all knew that.”