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 |
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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 a famous American computer scientist. She led the team that created the software for NASA's Apollo program. This special software helped guide the Apollo Guidance Computer for the Moon missions. Later, she started two software companies, Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies in 1986.
Margaret Hamilton has written over 130 papers and worked on many projects. She even created the term "software engineering". She wanted to show that creating software is a serious engineering field, just like building bridges or machines.
On November 22, 2016, Margaret Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This is a very high award in the United States. President Barack Obama gave it to her for her important work on the Apollo Moon missions.
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Early Life and Education
Margaret Elaine Heafield was born on August 17, 1936, in Paoli, Indiana. Her parents were Kenneth and Ruth Heafield. Her family later moved to Michigan. Margaret finished Hancock High School in 1954.
She 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 her math teacher, Florence Long, for inspiring her to study advanced mathematics. Margaret also says her father and grandfather, who were both very smart, encouraged her interest in philosophy.
Margaret Hamilton's Career
In 1959, Margaret Hamilton started working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She worked in the meteorology department, which studies weather. She wrote software to help predict the weather. At that time, computer science was a very new field. Programmers mostly learned by doing the work. Her work helped with early ideas about chaos theory, which studies how small changes can lead to big differences.
The SAGE Project
From 1961 to 1963, Hamilton worked on the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Project at 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.
The SAGE Project was a big step in computer history. It helped create a system that could track movements using computers. Margaret Hamilton shared a story about a difficult program she was given:
When new people joined, they would give them a program that no one could figure out. When I started, they gave it to me. It was tricky, and the person who wrote it put all the notes in Greek and Latin. I was the first one to get it to work. It even printed its answers in Latin and Greek.
Her success on this project helped her get the job at NASA for the Apollo flight software.
Working on the Apollo Guidance Computer
Margaret Hamilton learned about the Apollo project in 1965. She found the idea of sending people to the Moon very exciting. She joined the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. This lab was building the Apollo Guidance Computer for the Apollo Moon missions. Margaret was the first programmer hired for the Apollo project at MIT. She was also the first female programmer on the team. Later, she became the Director of the Software Engineering Division.
She was in charge of the team that wrote and tested all the software for the Apollo spacecraft. This included software for the Command Module and the Lunar Module. Her team also created software for the Skylab space station. She designed special software for finding and fixing errors, like restarting the system. She gained a lot of hands-on experience because computer science classes were rare back then.
Her team's work focused on making software very reliable. They found ways to prevent errors and reuse code. They also created systems for finding and fixing problems quickly. These methods helped make the Apollo software extremely dependable.
The Apollo 11 Landing
During the Apollo 11 mission, Margaret Hamilton's software played a key role. Just three minutes before the lunar lander touched down on the Moon, several computer alarms went off. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin had accidentally asked the computer to do too many things at once. The computer was designed to run seven programs, but Aldrin's request made it try to run an eighth.
Hamilton's software was ready for this. It showed "priority alarms" to the astronauts. These alarms meant the computer was overloaded but was still focusing on the most important tasks for landing. Hamilton had designed these alarms years before. She even had a rule: if you see a priority display, count to five before pressing any buttons. This gave the computer time to catch up.
A NASA engineer named Jack Garman understood the alarms. He shouted, "Go, go!" and the landing continued. Paul Curto, who nominated Hamilton for an award, called her work "the foundation for ultra-reliable software design."
Hamilton later explained what happened:
The computer was smart enough to know it was being asked to do too much. It sent an alarm, telling the astronaut, 'I'm overloaded, and I will only keep the most important tasks.' The computer was programmed to fix problems. It got rid of less important tasks and focused on the ones needed for landing. If the computer hadn't recognized this problem and fixed it, I doubt Apollo 11 would have been a successful Moon landing.
Starting Her Own Businesses
In 1976, Margaret Hamilton started 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.
Hamilton was the CEO of HOS until 1984. In 1986, she started another company, Hamilton Technologies, Inc. This company focused on a new way of designing systems and software. Her ideas aimed to prevent most errors from happening in the first place.
Margaret Hamilton's Legacy
Margaret Hamilton is famous for creating the term "software engineering". She explained how it happened:
When I first used the term, no one had heard of it. It was a joke for a long time. They teased me about my new ideas. It was a memorable day when a respected hardware expert agreed that building software should be an engineering field, just like hardware. This showed that our work was finally seen as a real engineering field.
When Hamilton first used the term, software development was not taken as seriously as other types of engineering. She wanted to make it a respected field. Over time, "software engineering" became a recognized and important discipline.
Her work on the Apollo mission helped her create a mathematical theory for systems and software. This method helps keep errors out of systems from the very beginning. Her ideas are still very important in software engineering today. She also helped open doors for more women to work in science and technology fields.
Tributes to Margaret Hamilton
In 2017, a "Women of NASA" LEGO set was released. It included minifigures of Hamilton and other famous women from NASA. Hamilton's part of the set shows her famous 1969 photo with a stack of her software listings.
In 2019, to celebrate 50 years since the Apollo landing, Google honored Hamilton. They used mirrors at the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility to create a picture of Hamilton and Apollo 11 by moonlight.
A character named Margo Madison in the TV series For All Mankind was inspired by Margaret Hamilton.
Awards and Honors
- In 1986, she received the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award.
- In 2003, NASA gave her the Exceptional Space Act Award. This award included $37,200, the largest amount given to any person in NASA's history.
- 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 award a civilian can receive in the United States.
- On April 28, 2017, she received the Computer History Museum Fellow Award. This award honors people whose computer ideas have changed the world.
- In 2018, she received an honorary doctorate from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
- In 2019, she received The Washington Award.
- In 2019, she received an honorary doctorate from Bard College.
- In 2019, she received the Intrepid Lifetime Achievement Award.
- In 2022, she was added to the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.
Personal Life
Margaret Hamilton has a sister named Kathryn Heafield.
She met her first husband, James Cox Hamilton, in college. They married on June 15, 1958. She briefly taught high school math and French. They then moved to Boston, Massachusetts. Their daughter, Lauren, was born on November 10, 1959. They divorced in 1967. Margaret married Dan Lickly two years later.
See also
In Spanish: Margaret Hamilton (científica) para niños
