Margaret Hamilton (software engineer) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Margaret Hamilton
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Hamilton in 1995
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Margaret Elaine Heafield
August 17, 1936 Paoli, Indiana, U.S.
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| Education | University of Michigan Earlham College (BA) |
| Occupation | Software engineer |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | James Cox Chambers (former son-in-law) |
| Awards | Presidential Medal of Freedom |
Margaret Elaine Hamilton (born August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist. She led the Software Engineering Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. There, she guided the creation of the flight software for NASA's Apollo Guidance Computer. This software was vital for the Apollo program missions to the Moon. Later, she started two software companies, Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies in 1986. Both were located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Margaret Hamilton also created the term "software engineering". She explained that she used this term to show that creating software was a serious engineering field, just like building bridges or machines.
On November 22, 2016, Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This is a very high honor in the United States. President Barack Obama gave it to her for her amazing work on the Apollo Moon missions' flight software.
Margaret Hamilton: A Space Software Pioneer
Early Life and Learning
Margaret Elaine Heafield was born on August 17, 1936, in Paoli, Indiana. Her parents were Kenneth and Ruth Esther Heafield. Her family later moved to Michigan. Margaret finished Hancock High School in 1954.
She first studied mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1955. Then, she moved to Earlham College, where her mother had also studied. In 1958, she earned a degree in mathematics with a minor in philosophy. She credits Florence Long, her math professor at Earlham, for inspiring her love for advanced mathematics. Margaret's father, a poet, and her grandfather, a school headmaster, encouraged her interest in philosophy.
Her Journey in Computing
In 1959, Margaret Hamilton began working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She joined the meteorology department, where she helped Edward Norton Lorenz predict weather. She programmed computers like the LGP-30 and PDP-1. Her work helped Lorenz develop his ideas about chaos theory, which studies unpredictable systems. Back then, computer science and software engineering were new fields. Programmers often learned their skills by working on projects.
Building Software for Weather and Defense
From 1961 to 1963, Hamilton worked on the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Project. This project was at the MIT Lincoln Lab. She was one of the programmers who wrote software for a special computer. This computer was used by the U.S. Air Force to find unfriendly aircraft. She also wrote software for tracking satellites.
Hamilton once shared a story about a difficult program she was given. It was a test for new programmers. The person who wrote it had put all the comments in Greek and Latin! Margaret was the first person to make it work. She even got it to print answers in those ancient languages. Her success on this project showed her talent. It helped her get the job at NASA to lead the Apollo flight software team.
Guiding Apollo to the Moon
Margaret Hamilton learned about the Apollo project in 1965. She found the idea of sending humans to the Moon very exciting. She joined the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. This lab was creating the Apollo Guidance Computer for the Apollo program. Hamilton was the first programmer hired for the Apollo project at MIT. She was also the first female programmer on the team. She later became the Director of the Software Engineering Division.
Her team was responsible for writing and testing all the software for the Apollo spacecraft. This included the Command Module and the Lunar Module. They also worked on software for the Skylab space station. Her team also created system software. This included programs for finding and fixing errors, like restarts and special "Priority Displays." These displays would alert astronauts to important issues. Margaret gained her skills through hands-on experience. At that time, formal computer science courses were rare.
Her expertise covered many areas. These included designing systems, developing software, and making sure programs were reliable. She also worked on ways to reuse code and prevent errors. Her methods helped programmers find and fix mistakes early on. This made the software much more dependable.
The Apollo 11 Landing Challenge
During the Apollo 11 mission, a critical moment happened. The Apollo Guidance Computer and its software saved the Moon landing. Three minutes before the lunar lander touched down, several computer alarms went off. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin had asked the computer to show extra data. This request overloaded the computer. It was designed to run seven programs at once, but Aldrin's request made it try to run eight.
The on-board flight software caught these alarms. It showed "never supposed to happen displays" to the astronauts. These were priority alarms that interrupted their normal screens. Hamilton had prepared for this exact situation years before. She had designed a "priority display" system. This system would show critical warnings in an emergency. It also made sure that important tasks continued to run.
The alarms meant the computer was overloaded. It could not finish all its tasks in time. Hamilton's software was designed to handle this. It would drop less important tasks and focus on the most critical ones needed for landing. A NASA engineer named Jack Garman understood the alarms. He quickly told the astronauts to "Go, go!" and they continued the landing. Paul Curto, a senior technologist, called Hamilton's work "the foundation for ultra-reliable software design."
Hamilton later explained the event:
The computer (or rather the software in it) was smart enough to recognize that it was being asked to perform more tasks than it should be performing. It then sent out an alarm, which meant to the astronaut, 'I'm overloaded with more tasks than I should be doing at this time and I'm going to keep only the more important tasks'; i.e., the ones needed for landing ... Actually, the computer was programmed to do more than recognize error conditions. A complete set of recovery programs was incorporated into the software. The software's action, in this case, was to eliminate lower priority tasks and re-establish the more important ones ... If the computer hadn't recognized this problem and taken recovery action, I doubt if Apollo 11 would have been the successful Moon landing it was.
Starting Her Own Companies
In 1976, Margaret Hamilton co-founded a company called Higher Order Software (HOS). She wanted to use her ideas about preventing errors in software. They created a product called USE.IT. This product was used in many government projects.
In 1986, she started another company, Hamilton Technologies, Inc. This company focused on a new language she developed called Universal Systems Language (USL). This language and its tools helped design and develop systems and software in a better way.
Her Lasting Impact
Margaret Hamilton is famous for creating the term "software engineering". She explained how this happened:
When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. It was a memorable day when one of the most respected hardware gurus explained to everyone in a meeting that he agreed with me that the process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline, just like with hardware. Not because of his acceptance of the new 'term' per se, but because we had earned his and the acceptance of the others in the room as being in an engineering field in its own right.
What is Software Engineering?
When Hamilton first used "software engineering" during the Apollo missions, people did not always see software development as a serious engineering field. Margaret wanted to show that creating software was a real engineering discipline. Over time, the term "software engineering" became respected. It is now seen as important as any other technical field.
Hamilton's work helped create the basic rules of computer programming. Her ideas about preventing errors from the start were very important. Her USL language was designed to keep most errors out of a system from the beginning. This was a big change from just testing for errors later.
Inspiring Future Generations
Margaret Hamilton's innovations were crucial for sending humans to the Moon. She also helped open doors for more women to work in STEM fields. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. She, along with other pioneers like Grace Hopper, inspired many women to pursue careers in software and technology.
In 2017, a "Women of NASA" LEGO set was released. It included a minifigure of Hamilton. The set honored her and other women who contributed to NASA's history. Her part of the set shows her famous 1969 photo with a stack of her software listings.
In 2019, Google honored Hamilton to celebrate 50 years since the Apollo landing. They used mirrors at the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility to create a picture of Hamilton and Apollo 11 by moonlight.
Awards and Recognition
- In 1986, Hamilton received the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award.
- In 2003, she was given the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award. This was for her scientific and technical contributions.
- In 2009, she received the Outstanding Alumni Award from Earlham College.
- In 2016, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama. This is the highest civilian honor in the United States.
- On April 28, 2017, she received the Computer History Museum Fellow Award. This award honors people whose computing ideas changed the world.
- In 2018, she received an honorary doctorate degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
- In 2019, she was awarded The Washington Award.
- In 2019, she received an honorary doctorate degree from Bard College.
- In 2019, she was awarded the Intrepid Lifetime Achievement Award.
- In 2022, she was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.
Family Life
Margaret Hamilton met James Cox Hamilton in college. They married in 1958 and had a daughter named Lauren. Margaret later married Dan Lickly.
See also
In Spanish: Margaret Hamilton (científica) para niños
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