Margaret Hamilton, the software pioneer who guided Apollo to the moon, dies aged 90

MIT has announced the death of Margaret Hamilton, the computer scientist who led development of the software that guided Apollo’s astronauts to the moon. She died on 30 September and was 90. No cause of death was announced, MIT News reported.

Hamilton was the first programmer to join — and the first woman hired — when MIT won NASA’s contract to develop the Apollo onboard flight software, eventually leading the team that built the code for the crewed missions.

Her software famously saved the 1969 lunar landing. Minutes before touchdown, the onboard computer raised the alarm; Hamilton’s error detection and recovery programming identified a hardware-related fault and compensated, allowing the mission to proceed safely.

Earlier in her career she had written software at an MIT laboratory capable of detecting enemy aircraft. Her pioneering work helped establish software engineering as a dedicated discipline.

In 2016, Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His citation said her software architecture “led to giant leaps for humankind, writing the code that helped America set foot on the moon”.

She is survived by her daughter, a son-in-law, two grandsons and four great grandchildren.