This past summer, with the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing, I suspect we all felt a surge of MIT pride. After all, when NASA realized that the moon landing would require a computer guidance system that was miniaturized, foolproof, and far more powerful than any the world had ever seen, they called MIT. What’s more, the second person to set foot on the moon was Buzz Aldrin, ScD ’63—the first astronaut to have a doctoral degree. (In fact, of the 12 humans who have walked on the moon, four graduated from MIT.)
I was also drawn to the story of Margaret Hamilton. (See profile, page 16.) Among the first programmers hired for the Apollo project at MIT, she played a key role in developing the software that made the moon landing possible. (She was also one of the first to argue that computer programming deserved as much respect as computer hardware. So she insisted on a brand-new term: “software engineering.”)
Indeed, the spirit of that magnificent human project speaks to our community’s deepest values and its highest aspirations. First: the power of interdisciplinary teams. Our society loves to single out superstars. Yet I expect that as graduates of MIT, you are already skeptical of stories of scientific triumph that have only one hero. In fact, among the most powerful lessons we teach our students is the importance of learning from each other, respecting each other, and depending on each other: the instinct for sharing the work and sharing the credit.
Don’t settle for half the story.
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