Talk about a woman on a mission! As a computer scientist in the early 1960s, Margaret Hamilton was already a leader in the field. She was working as a software developer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when the university was contacted by NASA to help with the Apollo program.
Hamilton was the first programmer hired for the project, and by 1965 she was leading a team—one that was assigned to write onboard flight software for the Apollo 11 mission. The software would allow the astronauts to operate the spacecraft as they navigated to and from the moon. This photo shows Hamilton in 1969 standing next to a towering stack of printouts containing the code that she and her team had developed.
Thanks to the work of Hamilton and her team, the Apollo 11 spaceflight was a historic success. On July 20, 1969, NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon.
In the decades since, Hamilton has received many honors for her pioneering achievements in computer science. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and there is even a LEGO action figure of her—standing next to her Apollo 11 code.
—Brooke Ross
