THE WOMAN IN THE MOON

An accessible biography of Margaret Hamilton, who had a leadership role in writing the software that would send astronauts to the moon—and bring them back.

A prologue sets up President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon and MIT’s Instrumentation Lab’s role in developing the Apollo Guidance Computer; Margaret was the only woman in the room during a pivotal meeting between skeptical astronauts and the MIT team, who promised to achieve this goal within a few years. Hamilton’s story, intertwined with the Apollo missions, is then set out in a linear fashion: childhood, adolescence, college, and marriage; her path to becoming a key player in writing the software for the AGC; and multiple Apollo missions and her career after the Apollo program ended. Hamilton’s task was not just to write code, but to persuade the astronauts to trust the digital autopilot feature; she accomplished both and declared the moon landing a highlight of her life. Technical language and terms are explained simply, and captioned photographs and sidebar content are included generously throughout. These valuable elements—such as a photo of Hamilton in a command module simulator and information about Ada Lovelace and Katherine Johnson—make the book inviting and approachable. The book presents Hamilton as not having focused or dwelled on any gender-based discrimination she faced and does not look at how she was able to succeed despite it.

An appealing biography of a quietly trailblazing engineer.