Margaret Hamilton, who led a software team for NASA's Apollo program, dies at 90
Summary
Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist who led the creation of the onboard flight software for NASA’s Apollo moon missions, died at age 90. Her work was essential for the success of the Apollo program and she is remembered as a pioneering figure in software engineering and women in technology.Key Facts
- Margaret Hamilton led the software team for NASA’s Apollo program that created the moon mission flight software.
- She passed away on September 30, 2026, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at age 90.
- Hamilton worked at MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory, which had the NASA contract for Apollo.
- She helped build one of the most complex software systems at a time when software engineering was a new field.
- A famous photo shows her standing next to the hundreds of pages of code her team wrote for Apollo.
- She was honored by NASA and featured in a Lego set celebrating women of NASA.
- Hamilton graduated in mathematics in 1958 and started at MIT in 1959.
- After Apollo, she founded two software companies and continued to be respected for her contributions.
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