Born as Margaret Heafield, she is an American system engineer, computer scientist and a woman entrepreneur as well. She was born on August 17, 1936, which makes Margaret Hamilton age be 82 years old as of now. She has served the Software Engineering Division as Director of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. She is also noted for being the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hamilton Technologies, Inc. in 1986. Till date, she was involved in numerous projects and programs and has already published more than 130 papers, proceedings, and reports. Let’s explore in detail about Hamilton’s biography in detail below:
Early Life and Education
Heafield was born in 1936 and his place of birth is in Paoli, Indiana, the United States of America. He was born to the parents named Kenneth Heafield (father) and Ruth Esther Partington (mother). Her father was a philosopher and poet who has influenced her to get involved in the technological world. Talking more about Hamilton’s family, her grandfather used to serve as Quaker Minister as well as a school headmaster. She completed her graduation in 1954 from Hancock High School and later went to the University of Michigan where she studied mathematics. She received her B.A. degree majoring in mathematics from Earlham College.
Career and Professional Life
Hamilton initially started working as a high school mathematics teacher after completing her graduation. She worked to support her husband who was doing his undergraduate degree at Harvard University. With the aim of graduating from Brandeis University in abstract mathematics, she moved to Boston. Later, she started working for the meteorology department and played a crucial role in developing weather predicting software at MIT.
Hamilton became the part of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Project for a couple of years until 1963. The project was started by MIT which later was developed in defense and anti-aircraft for the military.
After that, Hamilton became the part of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory which was focused on the Apollo space mission. She worked for Apollo and Skylab with a team contributing to developing the in-flight software. Hamilton did a great job at that time when software engineering courses and computer science courses were uncommon.
Hamilton co-founded Higher Order Software (HOS) where she contributed as the CEO of the company from 1976 to 1984. It developed a product named USE.IT which was used in numbers of government projects. Hamilton left Higher Order Software in 1985 and later founded Hamilton Technologies, Inc. and became the CEO of the company. It was Hamilton who presented the idea of the term “software engineering” which later turned as one of the recognized study subjects.
Personal Life
Margaret Hamilton is a married woman and her husband name is James Cox Hamilton. Her maiden name is Heafield. She met her spouse at Earlham College for the first time and got married in the late 1950s. They waited for Margaret to complete her bachelor’s degree before celebrating their wedding. The couple is blessed with a daughter named Lauren to whom they used to take lab in the weekends. However, the relationship between Margaret and James couldn’t last long and therefore the couple got divorced later. Margaret was the mother-in-law to billionaire Cox heir James Cox Chambers as her daughter married him on October 9, 1982. Together, they welcomed a son named James Cox Chambers who is nicknamed as Jim. Lauren and James divorced and later she married Richard David Selesnick.
Body Measurements
Margaret Hamilton has a perfect height but the exact body measurement details of her are still not known. We would let you know about her physical facts when the news about Hamilton’s health and body statistics would be available.
Salary and Net worth
The net worth of computer scientist Margaret Hamilton is estimated to be in a few million dollars amount. She has garnered a great amount of fortune from her long successful professional career as a software engineer, scientist and a businesswoman. She is the CEO of Hamilton Technologies, Inc. and has garnered experience of serving NASA and SAGE project. In addition to financial net worth, scientist Hamilton has retained numbers of awards in her name. She is the receiver of the Computer History Museum Fellow Award on April 28, 2017.
Wiki and Facts
Most of the popular wiki sites including Wikipedia have provided Margaret Hamilton biography. Though we can find social networking accounts opened in her name, the verified social profile of Hamilton is still lacking. According to some online source, she is one of the reasons for the landing of the Apollo 11 l on the moon. Hamilton is the source of inspiration to all the women in the world and has proven that women are too capable like men to be in the technological field.