Margaret Hamilton, Who Developed Apollo 11 Software, Dies at 90
A computer scientist whose work was crucial to the Apollo 11 mission, Margaret Hamilton, has died at the age of 90.
Margaret Hamilton, a pioneering computer scientist who led the team that developed the on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo missions, including the historic Apollo 11 landing, died on September 30. She was 90.
Hamilton's former employer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), confirmed her death. She was a trailblazer in her field, credited with coining the term "software engineering" through her work with NASA.
Born in Indiana in 1936, Hamilton studied mathematics at Earlham College, graduating in 1958. She began working at MIT in 1959 and eventually managed its Software Engineering Division. It was there she led the team responsible for writing and testing all the flight software for the Apollo program.
During the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, moments before the lunar module landed, the onboard computer system experienced an overload. Hamilton's team had anticipated such an issue, engineering "priority-driven software" that could shut down lower-priority tasks to ensure the critical landing sequence continued uninterrupted.
In recognition of her significant contributions to science and space travel, Hamilton was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2016.
"To say Hamilton was a pioneer - to say she was ahead of her time - would be a dramatic understatement," MIT stated. "She was a software engineer before it was mainstream."
Hamilton is survived by her daughter, a son-in-law, two grandsons, and four great-grandchildren.