Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Margaret Hamilton

     This Tuesday, President Obama awarded Margaret Hamilton a Presidential Medal of Freedom; the highest civilian honor in the US. Hamilton, now 80 years old, was awarded for her incredible accomplishments in working on space mission Apollo 11 that landed the first man on the moon.


     Hamilton began studying math at Earlham College and subsequently took a programming job at MIT, where she found her passion for Computer Science. She initially assisted with a missile defense system, until MIT received the request to begin work on software for the Apollo 11 mission. She then focused her team on creating programs that would alert the astronauts if the computer processors became overloaded, and to respond to this situation by prioritizing different tasks in an attempt to sustain functionality of the aircraft in crisis and, ideally, save those on-board. This software came in quite handy when the alarm sounded minutes before landing. Instead of aborting the mission completely at the sound of the alarm, the software prioritized the most critical tasks and the astronauts were able to safely land the vessel. As the President eloquently stated when bestowing this award upon her, "Our astronauts didn't have much time, but thankfully they had Margaret Hamilton."


     While Hamilton was largely recognized for her work making this space mission possible, she went on to make other revolutionary software that has enabled the use of technology as we know it. For example, she and her team at MIT went on to write code that created the framework for the first portable computer. Hamilton represents one of many women during this time that have often previously been forgotten in their contributions to Computer Science, as they were regularly labelled as "number crunchers" rather than software engineers.


Sources:
- https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/22/her-mission-was-space-and-software-and-now-she-has-presidential-medal-freedom/fr6Lzx4DPjY4HvKF0ufvhN/story.html
- http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38076123
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3 comments:

  1. UnknownNovember 25, 2016 at 1:39 PM

    Her work is admirable! In such a heavily male-dominated field as CS, it's important that we celebrate great female computer scientists like Margaret Hamilton or Grace Hopper, so that young girls would not feel intimidated, have role models to follow and know that they can also succeed!

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  2. UnknownNovember 25, 2016 at 6:10 PM

    I cant believe I had never heard of Margaret Hamilton until I read this post! that picture of her next to all the code used in the apollo 11 mission blew my mind, its really incredible how we were able to put people into space using that code.

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  3. UnknownNovember 25, 2016 at 7:36 PM

    Hey Ryan!
    Thanks for writing a post during thanksgiving week so that I could comment on it. You Da Real MVP. :')

    I knew of the story of how the Apollo 11 was almost out of fuel for landing during their moon landing and how the astronauts took a very risky move to move the craft further along so they wouldn't crash. I never knew Computer science had helped in that scenario as well. The field truly is so influential!

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