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Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The award recognized her leadership of the Apollo onboard flight-software effort.
GOTDONE ARCHIVE · 1936 to present
3 public itemsMargaret Hamilton
Computer scientist and software engineer
PHOTO: Daphne Weld Nichols / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 ↗Led the team that made Apollo’s onboard software reliable enough to carry people to the Moon and back.
What Margaret got done.
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Helped Apollo 11 software recover from overload alarms.
Priority scheduling let the guidance computer preserve landing-critical work during the lunar module’s descent.
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Led Apollo flight-software development at MIT.
Hamilton directed the Software Engineering Division responsible for onboard guidance software for command and lunar modules.