Albert Hopkins Employee Card

Albert Hopkins

Apollo Guidance Computer Designer

Albert Hopkins earned all three of his degrees in Engineering at Harvard and joined the Instrumentation Lab in 1960. He worked in computer science as part of the Digital Development Group. He helped design and build the prototype Apollo Guidance Computer, writing the operating system and input/output language. Hopkins had to work within the constraints of both size and memory available to make the Lunar Module and Command Service Module functioned.

After Apollo, Hopkins worked on fault tolerant computer systems with Draper. He was also an assistant professor at MIT. He eventually moved on from Draper and MIT to form ITP Computing, a private consulting practice. Hopkins was a member of the Institute for Electrical Engineers and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.