Published : 08 Oct 2026, 11:34 AM
Updated : 08 Oct 2026, 11:34 AM
Margaret Hamilton, the pioneering researcher whose code helped NASA's Apollo astronauts land on the moon in the 20th-century space race, has died at 90. She is credited with helping create the field of software engineering.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), her former employer, confirmed her death on Wednesday in a post from its department of aeronautics and astronautics, CNN reports.
She died on Sept 30, but the cause was not disclosed, the American broadcaster said.
Hamilton joined MIT in 1959 and later led its Software Engineering Division, which secured a NASA contract in 1961. She eventually headed a team of about 100 engineers that developed software for the Apollo missions.
She is also credited with helping establish software engineering as a professional field and popularising the term.
Hamilton’s work focused heavily on preventing errors in spacecraft software. One system, later known as the “Lauren error” after her daughter, was developed after a simulator problem showed how a similar mistake could become dangerous during a mission.
During Apollo 11 in 1969, her software overrode an incorrect attempt to shift the flight computer’s processing to a radar system, allowing the mission to continue safely just minutes before the first lunar landing, NASA said.
Born in Paoli, Indiana, in 1936, Hamilton studied at the University of Michigan before earning a mathematics degree from Earlham College.
She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2016 for her contributions to science and space exploration. In 2003, NASA gave her its Exceptional Space Act Award.
After Apollo, Hamilton left the MIT laboratory when it became Draper Laboratory and went on to establish her own company. Draper CEO Jerry Wohletz said she had left an “indelible mark” on the organisation.
Hamilton’s work included asynchronous software, priority scheduling, end-to-end testing and man-in-the-loop decision-making, which later became important elements of highly reliable software design.
