Margaret Hamilton: the woman who sent humans to the moon
Rosalind Franklin solved the structure of DNA, Marie Curie pioneered research on radioactivity, and Lise Meitner was a key player in the discovery of nuclear fission. If like me, you were a STEMinite and took science A-levels, you were exposed to the groundbreaking accomplishments these women made – and when you consider the extent of social biases at the time, you realise these pioneers acted as so much more than scientists: they broke a chain of social norms that defined their role in science as nothing but invasive.
Praise readily falls on these women nowadays and many hail them as the perfect role models, not restricted to young women seeking to make a career in STEM. However, not all women in science were lucky. Countless stories are told of breakthroughs overseen because of gender – even Dr Franklin, the most famous female biologist to date, was robbed of a Nobel Prize with Crick and Watson.
One particularly disregarded story is that of Margaret Hamilton, a software engineering frontrunner that enabled the infamous landing of Apollo 11 on July 20,
There was a hardware problem; the rendezvous rad
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- Birth: August 17,
Margaret Hamilton
- After graduating from high school in , Hamilton pursued a degree in Mathematics at the University of Michigan. Eventually transferring to Earlham college in to complete her degree.
- Was contracted in at M.I.T. by NASA to write the Apollo program’s guidance software code. Pioneering the new and unfamiliar world of coding and software engineering.
- Coined the term “Software Engineer” to describe her role in developing the in-flight systems software and Priority Displays for the Apollo command module, lunar lander, and Skylab.
- As Apollo 11’s lunar lander module descended to the Moon, a computer error appeared. Margaret and Nasa’s software engineers reacted quickly to give a “Go/No Go” for the moon landing.
- President Barack Obama awarded Hamilton the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her pioneering spirit and dedication to NASA in
- Hamilton would continue to lead and develop the field of software, eventually starting her own company, “Hamilton Technology,” in
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Scientist of the Day - Margaret Hamilton
Margaret Heafield Hamilton, a software systems engineer, was born Aug. 17, Hamilton attended Earlham College in Indiana, and then came to MIT in , where she worked in the lab of Edward Lorenz and helped develop software for weather prediction, at the very time Lorenz was discovering the Butterfly Effect and laying the foundation for Chaos Theory. At another laboratory at MIT, Lincoln Lab, she then wrote software for one of the country’s first air defense systems, the SAGE system. By , she was working in the MIT Instrumentation Lab, developing software for the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), the world’s first portable computer, which would be carried aboard the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Lander (LEM). The lab was run by Charles Stark "Doc" Draper. In our profile of Draper some years ago, we discussed the AGC, but did not mention the software. I do not know when software development began for the AGC – it would seem that Hamilton would have been late to the table in – but she had time to display enough talent that she was soon in charge of software development for the AGC.
Margaret Hamilton posing in an Apoll
Margaret Hamilton
By Maia Weinstock | MIT News Office
August 17,Half a century ago, MIT played a critical role in the development of the flight software for NASA’s Apollo program, which landed humans on the Moon for the first time in One of the many contributors to this effort was Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist who led the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which in contracted with NASA to develop the Apollo program’s guidance system. For her work during this period, Hamilton has been credited with popularizing the concept of software engineering.
We had to find a way and we did. Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers.- Margaret Hamilton
In recent years, a striking photo of Hamilton and her team’s Apollo code has made the rounds on social media and in articles detailing her key contributions to Apollo 11&#;s success. According to Hamilton, this now-iconic image (at left, above) was taken at MIT in by a staff photographer for the Instrumentation Laboratory — later named the Draper Laboratory and today an independent organization — for use in promotion of the lab’s work on th
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