MIT and news outlets confirmed that Margaret Hamilton, who directed the onboard software for NASA's Apollo missions, died on Sept. 30 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 90.
Margaret Hamilton, the mathematician who led the team that wrote onboard software for NASA's Apollo missions, has died at 90. The New York Times reported that she died on Sept. 30 in a hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that her daughter, Lauren, confirmed the death.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her former employer, also confirmed the death and said she died on Sept. 30. MIT said Hamilton worked there from 1959 until the mid-1970s and managed the Software Engineering Division that wrote and tested in-flight software for Apollo 11.
Hamilton joined the MIT laboratory that was designing computers for the moon missions while she was a young mathematician. The software her team produced guided the landing that put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, and she is widely credited with helping establish software engineering as a discipline.
BBC News reported that she is survived by her daughter, a son-in-law, two grandsons and four great-grandchildren, citing MIT. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
The obituaries published on Oct. 7 and Oct. 8 are the first broad public confirmation of a death that occurred on Sept. 30. No further official memorial schedule was included in the MIT statement summarized by BBC.