Margaret Hamilton, a Pioneering Software Engineer Who Made the First Human Moon Landing Possible, Dies at 90

Software engineering pioneer Margaret Hamilton died on September 30 at age 90, leaving behind a trailblazing legacy of problem-solving and entrepreneurship that paved the way for a new branch of computer science and engineering. Hamilton is best known for her major contributions to the Apollo missions. Her work famously resolved a computer issue that enabled NASA’s Apollo 11 mission to put humans on the moon for the first time.

Her impact goes far beyond the lunar landing, though, and has had long-lasting effects, he adds. After earning her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Earlham College in 1958, she and her husband moved to Massachusetts. Hamilton started working on weather prediction software at MIT with Edward N.

Lorenz, the meteorologist who founded chaos theory. This position marked the beginning of her computer programming journey. In 1965, she joined the Instrumentation Lab at MIT, which was tasked with developing the onboard flight software for the Apollo program, with the goal of sending humans to the moon.

I was the first programmer to join and the first woman they hired,” Hamilton told the Guardian’s Zoë Corbyn in 2019. I had [software writing] as my background. I think [the lab] just figured that I could handle the unknown.” Hamilton eventually became the lead of the team creating the on-board flight software for the crewed missions and then assistant director in charge of the Command and Service Module team.

Quick fact: What was the first spacecraft on the moon? The uncrewed Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 was the first human-made object to reach our celestial companion when it crash-landed there in 1959. Her signature work in the field was “defensive” programming—computer programs capable of predicting or fixing issues by themselves—and “priority-driven” software.

The approach played a major role in the first human moon landing in July 1969. Shortly before the landing module was supposed to reach the lunar surface, alarms sounded from the onboard computer. A fault in a hardware switch had caused the computer to overload, threatening the success of the mission.