Medal of Freedom winners include two pioneering female computer scientists

Among the movie stars, athletes, and philanthropists awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom this week were two pioneering female computer scientists: Margaret Hamilton, who wrote the software that allowed the Apollo 11 mission to land safely on the moon, and Rear Admiral "Amazing" Grace Hopper, who invented the first compiler, which translated real-language code into something computers could understand.

Many of the devices we depend on today would have been impossible without their innovations.