GREAT WOMAN OF MATHEMATICS: MARGARET HAMILTON, born 1936. Software engineer who worked on the Apollo missions, founder of two software companies, author of over 130 papers. Hamilton earned a degree in mathematics with a minor in philosophy from @earlham1847. She intended to 1/8

pursue graduate work in mathematics, after teaching high school briefly, but got an opportunity to work with Lorenz at @MIT. There she helped develop software to predict weather patterns and influenced his work on chaos theory. Her next opportunity was at MIT's Lincoln Lab, 2/8

the SAGE Project, writing software to help the USAF search for unfriendly aircraft. She made a name for herself there early, solving a problem nobody else had been able to solve (pic). Her work at SAGE led to the opportunity of a lifetime, working on the Apollo space missions 3/8

as the Director of Software Engineering of MIT's Instrumentation Lab. Her lab developed onboard software for the Apollo missions. Hamilton's approach focused on safety and reliability, constantly anticipating problems and working to make the software as robust as possible 4/8

so that the mission could proceed safely. @NASA overruled some of her safety-focused requests because "the astronauts would not make any mistakes." Hamilton often brought her young daughter to work. One night the girl crashed the simulator by launching a prelaunch program. 5/8

Having been refused permission to add code to prevent the resulting crash to the actual software, Hamilton's planning--she added a program note about that very possibility--proved prescient when Jim Lovell made the same mistake on his flight. Her team found a solution and 6/8

got the astronauts home safely. In her post-Apollo life, Hamilton started two software companies. NASA coworker, Paul Curto, called her work "the foundation for ultra-reliable software design," which means we all owe her a debt of gratitude in our computer-guided lives. 7/8

Her awards and honors are far too numerous to list here, but they include the Ada Lovelace Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which she was awarded by @BarackObama in 2016, and her likeness being included in the extraordinarily cool @LegoNASAWomen set. 8/8