Buzz
When a man—specifically, a man—made his historic step onto the Moon on July 20, 1969, software was still in its early stages. In fact, the Apollo mission marked one of the very first times this groundbreaking technology played such a crucial—and high-risk—role. On that day, history was shaped, and a woman named Margaret Hamilton was the mind behind the code that made it all possible.
Born in 1936, Hamilton earned her B.A. in mathematics from Earlham College. She self-taught programming before taking the helm of the Software Engineering Division at MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory, where she led the development of software for NASA's Apollo programs.
In this iconic photo, Hamilton stands surrounded by printouts of the Apollo Guidance Computer code—the same code that helped us land on the Moon. Developed by Hamilton's team, much of the code was written by her. This photograph was taken during the Apollo 11 mission when Hamilton was 33 years old. Her code ran on one of the earliest chip-based computers, which had only 64 kilobytes of memory.
As one of the first women to break into the world of software development, Hamilton was a true trailblazer. She is even credited with introducing the term software engineering. For her groundbreaking work, Hamilton was honored with the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award in 1986, the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award in 2003, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., in 2016.
In 2014, Hamilton spoke with El País about the newfound attention surrounding her image online. She shared her thoughts on the matter:
"In the early stages of this project, software was often treated like an afterthought, less important than other engineering fields, like hardware engineering. It was seen as more of an art or magic, rather than a science. I always believed that both art and science played roles in its development, but back then, most people didn’t see it that way. Aware of this, I fought to give software the legitimacy it deserved, so both it and its creators would be respected. That's when I started using the term 'software engineering' to set it apart from hardware and other engineering fields while still considering all as part of the systems engineering process. At first, my use of the term was considered a joke, and I was often teased for my unconventional ideas. Over time, however, software gained the same level of respect as any other discipline."
Hamilton also mentioned that the Apollo 11 mission provided the "most exciting and memorable moments" of the Apollo program, though she regarded Apollo 8 as a close second.
This story has been updated as of 2019.
