Le scienziate dimenticate: Margaret Hamilton, le missioni sulla Luna, matematica e programmazione

Benvenuti, Silvia ; Pagli, Linda

Matematica, cultura e società, Série 1, Tome 6 (2021) no. 1, pp. 23-35

Résumé

Cold War, 1961: the Soviet Union gave the United States a terrible blow by sending the first man into space. President Kennedy decides to try the road of the mission to conquer the Moon, very difficult but of great media impact. The young mathematician Margaret Hamilton finds herself almost by accident to be a key figure in the mission: hired as a programmer when her experience was minimal, she quickly becomes expert enough to be put in charge of the NASA team responsible for the software of the guidance computer of the Apollo 11. She invents new methods of software coordination and control that will become very important in the near future, she was a pioneer of software engineering, a discipline to which she herself gives her name. The complexity of the Apollo program is enormous both from an engineering, mathematical and computer science point of view, it involves hundreds of people, it can fail in a thousand different ways, but thanks to Margaret's scrupulousness it has the success we know. Her very important contribution is rewarded by President Obama.