Margaret Hamilton

Margaret Hamilton (born August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and entrepreneur best known for her critical role in developing the navigation software for NASA’s Apollo program. As director of the Software Engineering Division at MIT, she led the team that wrote the code which enabled the Apollo 11 spacecraft to land successfully on the Moon in 1969. Her work was vital in handling real-time errors during the mission, preventing a potential abort of the lunar landing. She also pioneered the use of the term "software engineering", helping to establish it as a respected discipline within the field of engineering.

Quotes

• In the early days of this project, software was treated like an adopted child and not taken as seriously as other engineering disciplines, such as hardware engineering, and was thought of as art and magic, not science. I have always believed that art and science were involved in its creation, but at the time most people thought otherwise. Knowing this, I fought to legitimize software so that both software engineering and those who built it would receive the respect they deserved, so I began using the term “software engineering” to differentiate it from hardware and other forms of engineering. When I first started using these words, they were considered funny. It was a running joke for a long time. They liked to make fun of my radical ideas. Software eventually earned the same respect as any other discipline.