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Margaret Hamilton, a computer science pioneer best known for her work at MIT leading development of the flight software for the Apollo missions to the moon, has died at 90.
Read about her legacy via MIT News: https://t.co/ODkbdIsoHw pic.twitter.com/M2xauYYUkU"To say Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer — to say she was ahead of her time — would be a dramatic understatement," said Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Programme Professor and interim head of the MIT Department Aeronautics and Astronautics."She was a software engineer at a time when that field was in its infancy, and she not only developed advanced code herself….
The best way to honor her legacy is to finally pick up where her generation left off and never stop going. https://t.co/SZ16EX5GcKBorn in Indiana in 1936, Hamilton studied mathematics before moving to Boston, Massachussetts with her husband in 1959.
She found employment at MIT, working in meteorology before she joined a lab in 1965 that was seeking people to develop software to "send a man to the Moon."Hamilton "was hired as the first programmer for the Apollo project at MIT, as well as the first female programmer in the project," the university said.
"By 1968, she was assistant director in charge of (Apollo's) Command and Service Module team, and more than 400 people were working on Apollo's software," MIT said.Hamilton was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former president Barack Obama in 2016 for her achievements.Read: Trump signs order to create a US Space AcademyIn 2009, Hamilton told MIT News: "There was no second chance.
We took our work seriously, many of us beginning this journey while still in our 20s.""Coming up with solutions and new ideas was an adventure.
Dedication and commitment were a given.
Mutual respect was across the board.
Because software was a mystery, a black box, upper management gave us total freedom and trust," Hamilton added.
Margaret Hamilton, scientist who worked on NASA's Apollo programme, dead at 90 AFP | Updated 3 hours ago | Computing pioneer was awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama, published over 130 papers.
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