MIT confirmed the death of Margaret Hamilton, who directed the software engineering team for the Apollo onboard computers. She died on 30 September in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 90.
Margaret Hamilton, the computer scientist who led the team that wrote onboard software for NASA's Apollo missions, has died at 90. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed her death, the BBC reported. She died on 30 September. The New York Times said she died in a hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that her daughter, Lauren, confirmed the death.
Hamilton worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s and managed the Software Engineering Division, the BBC said. In that role she led engineers writing and testing onboard in-flight software for Apollo 11, which guided Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the lunar landing. The New York Times said she was the first female programmer hired onto the Apollo project at MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory, in 1965, and was later director of software engineering.
The Times said the project developed two 70-pound onboard computers, one in the command module and one in the lunar module. Hamilton is widely credited with helping establish software engineering as a discipline. MIT said calling her a pioneer would be an understatement, the BBC reported.
She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. The BBC said she is survived by her daughter, a son-in-law, two grandsons and four great-grandchildren, according to MIT.
The reports are obituaries of a death on 30 September, published after MIT's confirmation. They do not describe a new NASA program.
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- MIT said calling Hamilton a pioneer would be an understatement.