Margaret Hamilton, Apollo software pioneer, dies at 90

Margaret Hamilton, the pioneering mathematician and computer scientist who led the software development team for NASA’s Apollo program, has died at the age of 90.

Hamilton is credited with coining the term ‘software engineering’ to establish the discipline as a professional field distinct from hardware development. Her work was instrumental to the success of the Apollo moon landings. Notably, the flight software she oversaw was designed with high levels of resilience; during the 1969 lunar descent, the system successfully managed a processing overload by shedding low-priority tasks, preventing a catastrophic failure during the landing.

Born in Indiana in 1936, Hamilton began her career at MIT working on weather-prediction algorithms before joining the MIT Lincoln Laboratory to work on the SAGE air-defense system. She later served as assistant director of the team responsible for the command and service module software for the Apollo missions.