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Apollo software lead Margaret Hamilton dies at 90
BBC News··4d ago
Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, who led Apollo mission software work, has died at 90. MIT confirmed she died on 30 September. She managed the Software Engineering Division that wrote onboard code for Apollo 11. That software helped Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the Moon in 1969. Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
Prism
What It Means For You
- Hamilton’s Apollo software is cited as an early model for priority-driven system design.
- MIT and Earlham College issued statements marking her death and career.
- She is survived by a daughter, a son-in-law, two grandsons and four great-grandchildren.
What's Happening
- MIT said calling her ahead of her time would be a dramatic understatement.
- She worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s.
- From the 1970s she founded software firms, including Hamilton Technologies in Massachusetts.
The Apollo 11 alarm moment
- Moments before the 1969 landing, an onboard computer raised an overload alarm.
- Priority-driven software shut background tasks and kept the landing sequence running.
- A 1969 photograph shows Hamilton beside a stack of printed code as tall as she was.
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