The woman who smiles in these photos, next to a pile of volumes about as high as she is, is the American engineer and computer scientist Margaret Hamilton. In 1969 you played a decisive role in the landing of man on the moon. On those sheets is written the source code for the Apollo 11 guidance computer. Three minutes before the Apollo 11 module touched the lunar ground, the radar – which did not deal with the moon landing operations – was sending to the computer incorrect data, overloading it. And threatening not to leave room for the calculations necessary to complete the descent. But Hamilton and her team had anticipated the problem and prepared the operating system for this emergency, which helped save the mission.
by Eleonora Giovinazzo