Margaret Hamilton, who led a software team for NASA's Apollo program, dies at 90
Margaret Hamilton, a pioneering software engineer who led the team responsible for NASA's Apollo flight software, has passed away at age 90. Her work was instrumental in the success of the Apollo moon landings and she later became a prominent figure representing women in STEM.
Why it matters
Hamilton's contributions laid the foundation for modern software engineering and her legacy continues to inspire women in technology fields.
Margaret Hamilton, a groundbreaking computer scientist who led the team that created the onboard flight software for NASA’s moon-bound Apollo program and later in life was celebrated as a powerful symbol of women in technology, has died. She was 90.
Hamilton died Sept. 30 at a hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, her daughter, Lauren Hamilton, told The Associated Press on Thursday. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said on the social platform X that her work helped make humanity’s first journeys to the moon possible.
“To say Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer — to say she was ahead of her time — would be a dramatic understatement,” Olivier de Weck, the Apollo program professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and interim head of its aeronautics and astronautics department, told MIT News, a publication of the university's communications office.
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