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The most important technical woman in the Apollo program has died

Posted by Potomac User icon on October 8, 2026, 18:36:25

You may have heard about "Hidden Figures" and its story, which is nice but inflated the story, IMO. The real top female technical contributor was Margaret Hamilton, who led software development at MIT for onboard computers in the Apollo program.

The NYT has a nice obit today.

I have a whole book on Apollo's onboard computer hardware and software, and it was quite an accomplishment to pull off with such primitive capacity by modern standards (e.g., no chips).

mit's writeup is nice

Posted by torinese User icon on October 9, 2026, 09:13:55, in reply to "The most important technical woman in the Apollo program has died"

https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007

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the team had to implement some realtime updates in flight a few times

Posted by Potomac User icon on October 9, 2026, 13:24:19, in reply to "mit's writeup is nice"

Risky but essential. The scariest was to stifle the abort switch when it was at risk of triggering by accident.

And that goes for your little dog, too.*

Posted by complainant User icon on October 8, 2026, 19:11:20, in reply to "The most important technical woman in the Apollo program has died"

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*Snert*. *

Posted by illinijohn User icon on October 8, 2026, 20:51:17, in reply to "And that goes for your little dog, too.*"

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Was she the woman in the famous photo standing next to the tower of printed out code?*

Posted by biclops User icon on October 8, 2026, 19:00:06, in reply to "The most important technical woman in the Apollo program has died"

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Don't take offense, better make amends
Rip it all to shreds and let it go

yes

Posted by torinese User icon on October 9, 2026, 09:14:35, in reply to "Was she the woman in the famous photo standing next to the tower of printed out code?*"

https://news.mit.edu/2016/scene-at-mit-margaret-hamilton-apollo-code-0817

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