Margaret Hamilton, the groundbreaking researcher who helped create the field of software engineering and whose code helped land NASA’s Apollo astronauts on the moon to win the 20th-century space race, has died. She was 90.
Hamilton’s former employer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, confirmed her death in a post from the department of aeronautics and astronautics. The cause of her death was not disclosed.
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It was during her time working at MIT, where she took a job in 1959 and remained until the mid-1970s, that Hamilton managed the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. The division landed a contract with NASA in 1961. She ultimately led a team of 100 engineers that designed the software to guide NASA’s Apollo missions.
Through her work, Hamilton is also credited as one of the founders of the field of software engineering — a term she coined — by helping to establish it as a professional practice.
“To say Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer — to say she was ahead of her time — would be a dramatic understatement,” said Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program Professor and interim head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, in a statement. “She was a software engineer at a time when that field was in its infancy, and she not only developed advanced code herself but also led a team in using that nascent technology to develop one of the most complex systems humanity had ever achieved.”
Hamilton was honored in 2016 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama for her contribution to science and space travel.
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President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Margaret H. Hamilton, a pioneering computer scientist and former head of the Software Engineering Division of MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory who led the development of on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo moon missions. (Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
