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Margaret Hamilton, Who Wrote the Apollo Flight Software, Dies at 90

Margaret Hamilton, whose Apollo guidance software helped land astronauts on the moon and who helped establish software engineering as a discipline, has died at 90, MIT News reports.

AI News Feed · 2026-10-09 17:14

Hamilton worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s. MIT News described her as a computing pioneer who authored more than 130 publications and helped turn software engineering into a dedicated field. After leaving the institute, she became a computing entrepreneur and chief executive, and MIT News said her life's work was recognized with many awards and honors.

"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 and interim head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said. "She was a software engineer at a time when that field was in its infancy, and she not only developed advanced code herself but also led a team in using that nascent technology to develop one of the most complex systems humanity had ever achieved."

De Weck said the Apollo program "still stands as one of our greatest testaments to the power of collaboration, ingenuity, and engineering," and called Hamilton a fundamental contributor to its success. He added that the Apollo work "was just the beginning" for her, saying she went on to become an entrepreneur and "remained on the cutting edge of systems software throughout an extraordinary career, while acting as an advocate, mentor, and inspiration to millions."

In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Hamilton the Presidential Medal of Freedom. According to MIT News, the citation stated that she "defined new forms of software engineering and helped launch an industry that would forever change human history," and that her "software architecture led to giant leaps for humankind, writing the code that helped America set foot on the moon."

Slashdot, a long-running technology news site, carried the report of her death through a reader submission that noted her role in the 20th century space race. The report did not give a place or cause of death.