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Earlham Notable Alumni

Margaret (Heafield) Hamilton - Class of 1958

Software Engineer 

Side-by-side of Margaret standing next to her code for the Apollo 11 space mission and the Lego version

CC Wikimedia Commons; Quinn Doden photo of Lego set

Hamilton receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, 2016

CC Wikimedia Commons

Awards and Honors 

  • 1986 - Granted the Ada Lovelace award by the Association for Women in Computing. Ada Lovelace is considered the world's first computer programer, and the award is granted to women who have made contributions to math and science. 
  • 2003 - Granted the Exceptional Space Act Award by NASA. 
  • 2009 - Granted the Outstanding Alumni Award by Earlham College. 
  • 2016 - Granted the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, one of the highest honors a US citizen can receive. 
  • 2017 - Women of NASA Lego set released, including Margaret Hamilton alongside astronauts and mathematicians Katherine Johnson, Sally Ride, Nancy Grace Roman, and Mae Jemison. Science writer and editor Maia Weinstock conceptualized and proposed the idea to Lego with the help of online support, saying her goal was that the lego set would "'encourage girls to consider math, science or engineering as a future path.'" Lilly Library's Friends Collection has a set in its archives. 

There was no choice but to be pioneers. At times, we just had to make it up. - Margaret Hamilton in reference to making the code for the Apollo 11 moon landing.

- A new field at the time, she referred to computer science and software engineering as the "Wild West." 

Overview

  • Born in Paoli, Indiana on August 17, 1936
  • Majored in math while at Earlham. Inspired by Earlham Professor Florence Long to study abstract mathematics
  • Married James Cox Hamilton, had daughter Lauren, and moved to Cambridge, MA
  • Started working for MIT
  • Was hired to work on the Apollo 11 moon landing
  • Coined term "Software Engineer" 
  • Started own software engineering company

Biography

MIT and NASA 

  • In 1959, took a job at MIT creating software for predicting the weather. 
  • Later worked on the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) program, which helped the US military track enemy aircrafts. 
  • Margaret was very good at finding and fixing errors in software, saying, "From day one it's been a fascination [for me]—the subject of errors." 
  • Success at SAGE noticed by MIT's Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, which was working with NASA on the moon landing, and Margaret was hired. 
  • In 1965, became the director of her team and oversaw over 100 computer programmers.
  • Described her job as a Software Engineer in order to give computer programming validity as a new scientific field.
  • Credited as one of the first people to coin that term and develop the field. 

The Apollo 11 Mission

  • The team's main objective was to create software for the mission's two portable computers on spacecraft and landing vessel. These portable computers were much smaller than computers usually were at this time; the code had to be extremely compact. 
  • Every line of code was handwritten; it was time-consuming and detail-oriented work. 
  • Hamilton discovered that if the computer received conflicting commands at the same time, it would lock up completely, a dangerous possibility for the actual mission.
  • She brought this issue up to NASA, but was told that that would not occur during a space mission and to not write extra code. 
  • Hamilton developed error detection code for the mission anyway, allowing the computer to prioritize its most important tasks first.
  • Exactly what Hamilton predicted took place during the actual mission. At one point close to landing, the Apollo 11 computer received conflicting demands and flashed an error code. This error code was one for which Hamilton created detection and emergency commands, and the computer only focused on the most important task at hand: landing. The Eagle landed on the moon on July 16, 1969. Without Hamilton's code, the Apollo 11 computer would have likely crashed and the mission would have been a failure. The moon landing was successful because of her foresight for errors, knowledge of software engineering, and confidence in this knowledge. 

After Apollo 11 

  • Continued working with NASA and MIT on the US's first space station, Skylab, and a space shuttle program. 
  • 1976 - Left NASA and started own company, Higher Order Software, that built products which made technology easier and faster to use. 
  • 1986 - Founded Hamilton Technologies, Inc. and developed the Universal Systems Language (USL). USL is a formal method for software design based on systems theory that is still utilized today.