On Margaret Hamilton and Authorship

Dear Editors,

Many people have heard of Margaret Hamilton, the computer scientist. She led the team that wrote the software for the Apollo programme, enabling astronauts to travel to the moon and return safely. However, few people know that before this celebrated role in the Apollo programme, she played a central but largely hidden role in a different field: the early development of chaos theory. In the 1960s, Hamilton worked with Ed Lorenz at MIT, writing software to predict the weather. Without her contributions, and those of other research assistants in Lorenz’s group (especially Ellen Gille née Fetter), those papers could not have been written. Today, such contributions would almost certainly merit authorship. At the time, however, they were recognised only through acknowledgements [e.g. 1, 2].

We cannot change the past, but we can and should acknowledge past injustices.

In an article in the December issue of Cav Mag, a Cavendish alumnus reminisced about his time in the Cavendish Radio Astronomy group. Past efforts to uncover the hallmarks of rotation in a particular galaxy were unsuccessful. He then recounts that a “lady” provided some code she had developed. With this program, the faint fingerprint of rotation could at last be uncovered. He failed to acknowledge the name of the scientist whose computer program was central to uncovering rotation in this galaxy. He also did not acknowledge her in the single-author paper in question.

CavMag should name those whose intellectual contributions make science possible. But questions of authorship remain difficult. It can be particularly challenging for early career researchers to navigate these questions, given unwritten discipline-specific rules and persistent power imbalances. Furthermore, certain areas of research, such as software development and data collection, have always been undervalued. How should we decide who has done enough to merit authorship?

The University of Cambridge authorship guidelines requires anyone who has made a “significant contribution” to be listed as an author. This inevitably leaves room for interpretation, whereby more junior scientists (for example, research assistants, placement students, or others) are excluded.

What, then, to recommend going forward? Firstly, we should promote early and transparent discussions about authorship, including author order, to ensure that authorship is an accurate reflection of research contributions. Secondly, early career scientists should speak about authorship with their colleagues to contextualise their own experiences and better understand the unwritten rules. And finally, the Cavendish Laboratory should set a higher bar: clearer, discipline-specific authorship standards will ensure that contributions are properly recognised at the time they are made.

It is tempting to frame Margaret Hamilton’s experience, and that of our unknown female scientist, as relics of a different era. However, the dynamics that excluded them from authorship are still present today. If we treat these stories as historical curiosities rather than warnings, we risk repeating them.

Dr Hannah Christensen

(Pembroke, 2006-2010)

[1.] E. B. Kraus and E. N. Lorenz, 1961: A numerical study of the effect of vertical stability on monsoonal and zonal circulations. Changes of Climate, UNESCO, Belgium, pp. 361-372.

[2] E. N. Lorenz, 1963: Deterministic nonperiodic flow. J. Atmos. Sci., 20, 130-141.