Margaret Hamilton

Mankind successfully set foot on the moon in 1969. While history's spotlight remains trained on the pivotal men of NASA, there were several women who played an essential role in the Apollo 11 mission.
Margaret Hamilton is one of those important women. 
As the leader of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, contracted by NASA for the Apollo program, Hamilton helmed the development of the spacecraft’s guidance and navigation system.
Her team developed the framework for software engineering, and she worked tirelessly in testing Apollo’s software.

Thanks to Hamilton’s rigorous testing of the software, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin successfully landed on the moon, despite a software override.

In 2003, NASA honored Hamilton with a special award recognizing the value of her software innovations and in 2016, President Obama awarded Hamilton a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.