I was saddened today to read of the death of Margaret Hamilton. She was one of the key programmers on the Apollo program having been responsible for much of the internal flight control system for Apollo 11. She is credited with inventing the term “Software Engineering”, and pictures of her standing next to towering stacks of printout paper from her work on Apollo are stuck in my memory banks.
Margaret was recognized for her work in 2016 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and also received awards from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the Computer History Museum, and NASA itself. It is safe to say that Margaret Hamilton was widely recognized for her work, and her recognition even includes being immortalized as a LEGO minifig.
Ms. Hamilton was 90 years old so she lived a good long life. But it never seems to be enough, especially for those whose lives occupy a particular place in history.
The header image for this post is AI generated using ChatGPT