Margaret Hamilton is a brilliant software engineer and computer scientist whose career changed both fields as a whole. Hamilton was one of the first computer software engineers ("Margaret Hamilton (software engineer)", 2023).Hamilton started her journey at Earlham college in Richmond, Indiana, where she studied mathematics and philosophy. After her time at college, she started developing software to be used for meteorology purposes. In a short amount of time, she began to help develop the first US Air Defense system, The semi-Automatic Ground Environment or SAGE project("Margaret Hamilton (software engineer)", 2023). She is credited with helping to develop a program that is used to detect an enemy aircraft for the SAGE project. After her work on the SAGE project, she started a career at MIT. It was here that she became the director of The Software Engineering Division in the MIT Instrumentation Library("Margaret Hamilton (software engineer)". While at MIT, she led a team (that worked with NASA) to develop on flight software for the apollo missions command and lunar modules. Up until this time, software engineering was not considered a field, so the work they were doing was some of the first of its kind. Hamilton focused her efforts towards software that could keep a hold of information even when the system crashes, and detecting potential errors("Margaret Hamilton", 2023). In 2016, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work on the Apollo missions. Hamilton has since founded two companies, Hamilton Technologies and Higher Order Software, coined the term "software engineering", and has been credited with the development of the Universal Systems Language (while working on the Apollo missions)("Margaret Hamilton", 2023). Hamilton's method of software engineering and her development of the USL has severely impacted the field of software engineering in a positive way.
To learn more about the field of computer science, visit George Mason Uiversity's CS Department website at: cs.gmu.edu
Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica, inc. (2023, August 13). Margaret Hamilton. Encyclopædia Britannica. www.britannica.com, and, Wikipedia Foundation. (2023, September 8). Margaret Hamilton (software engineer). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org