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 (née Heafield; born August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist. She led the team that created the flight software for NASA's Apollo program. This software helped guide astronauts to the Moon!
Margaret Hamilton also started two software companies. She is known for helping to create the term "software engineering". On November 22, 2016, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. This is a very high award in the United States.
Contents
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 went to Earlham College. In 1958, she earned a degree in mathematics with a minor in philosophy. Margaret says her math teacher, Florence Long, inspired her to study abstract mathematics. Her father and grandfather, who loved poetry, encouraged her to study philosophy.
Margaret Hamilton's Career
After college, Margaret Hamilton moved to Boston. In 1959, she began working at MIT. She helped develop software to predict weather. She programmed computers like the LGP-30 and PDP-1. Her work helped create chaos theory, which studies unpredictable systems.
At that time, computer science and software engineering were new fields. Programmers learned by doing the work. In 1961, Margaret moved to a new project. She hired and trained Ellen Fetter to take her place.
Working on the SAGE Project
From 1961 to 1963, Hamilton worked on the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Project. This 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. It helped them find possible enemy aircraft.
She also wrote software for tracking satellites. The SAGE Project helped create a computer system. This system could predict weather and track its movement. It was later used for air defense by the military.
Margaret shared a funny story about her early days:
When you started, they would give you a program that no one could get to work. When I started, they gave it to me. It was tricky, and the person who wrote it put all the comments in Greek and Latin! I was the first one to get it to work. It even printed answers in Latin and Greek.
Her success on this project helped her get the job at NASA. She became the lead developer for Apollo flight software.
Apollo Guidance Computer
Margaret Hamilton learned about the Apollo project in 1965. She thought the Moon program was "very exciting." She joined the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. This lab developed the Apollo Guidance Computer. This computer was vital for the Apollo lunar exploration program.
Margaret was the first programmer hired for the Apollo project at MIT. She was also the first female programmer on the project. Later, she became the Director of the Software Engineering Division. Her team wrote and tested all the software for the Apollo spacecraft. This included software for the Command Module and the Lunar Module. They also worked on software for the later Skylab space station.
Her team also created system software. This included programs to find and fix errors. They designed "Priority Displays." These displays would interrupt astronauts with important messages. Margaret gained hands-on experience. At that time, there were no specific courses for computer science or software engineering.
Her work focused on making software very reliable. She developed ways to find and fix errors early. She also worked on systems that could recover from problems.
Apollo 11 Landing Moment
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 reached the Moon, several computer alarms went off.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin had asked the computer to show altitude and other data. The system was designed to run seven programs at once. But Aldrin's request was the eighth. This caused unexpected error codes during the landing.
The flight software caught these alarms. It showed "never supposed to happen displays." These displays interrupted the astronauts with urgent warnings. Margaret Hamilton had prepared for this exact situation years before.
There was one other failsafe that Hamilton likes to remember. Her "priority display" innovation had created a knock-on risk that astronaut and computer would slip out of synch just when it mattered most. As the alarms went off and priority displays replaced normal ones, the actual switchover to new programmes behind the screens was happening "a step slower" than it would today.
Hamilton had thought long and hard about this. It meant that if Aldrin, say, hit a button on the priority display too quickly, he might still get a "normal" response. Her solution: when you see a priority display, first count to five.
The alarms were caused because the rendezvous radar switch was accidentally left on. This overloaded the computer. The alarms meant the computer couldn't do all its tasks at once. It had to delay some of them.
Hamilton's team had designed the software to handle this. It could detect errors and recover. It would "kill and recompute" from a "safe place." The priority displays would show critical alarms. This gave the astronauts a "go/no go" decision.
Jack Garman, a NASA computer engineer, understood the errors. He shouted, "Go, go!" and the landing continued. Paul Curto, a senior technologist, called Hamilton's work "the foundation for ultra-reliable software design."
Hamilton later wrote about 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.
Margaret Hamilton's 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 founded Hamilton Technologies, Inc. This company developed a new language called the Universal Systems Language (USL). It also created a tool called the 001 Tool Suite. These tools helped design and develop software more effectively.
Margaret Hamilton's Legacy
Margaret Hamilton is credited with creating the term "software engineering". She explained how it happened:
When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before... 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.
When Hamilton first used "software engineering" during the Apollo missions, software development was not seen as a serious engineering field. Hamilton wanted to make it a respected discipline. Over time, "software engineering" became as respected as other technical fields.
Her innovations helped get humans to the Moon. She also helped open doors for more women in STEM fields. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
In 2019, Google honored Hamilton for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo landing. They used mirrors at the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility to create a picture of her and Apollo 11 by moonlight.
Awards and Honors
Margaret Hamilton has received many awards for her important work:
- In 1986, she received the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award.
- In 2003, NASA gave her the Exceptional Space Act Award. This was for her scientific and technical work. The award included $37,200, the largest amount given to any individual 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 get in the U.S.
- In 2017, she received the Computer History Museum Fellow Award.
- In 2018, she received an honorary doctorate degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
- In 2019, she received The Washington Award.
- In 2019, she received another honorary doctorate degree from Bard College.
- In 2019, she was awarded the Intrepid Lifetime Achievement Award.
- In 2022, she was added to the National Aviation Hall of Fame.
Personal Life
Margaret Hamilton has a sister named Kathryn.
She met her first husband, James Cox Hamilton, in college. They married on June 15, 1958. Margaret briefly taught high school math and French. They moved to Boston, Massachusetts. Their daughter, Lauren, was born on November 10, 1959. Margaret and James divorced in 1967. Two years later, Margaret married Dan Lickly.
See also
In Spanish: Margaret Hamilton (científica) para niños
