{"id":2186975,"date":"2026-10-08T04:49:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T01:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2186975"},"modified":"2026-10-08T04:49:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T01:49:13","slug":"margaret-hamilton-whose-software-helped-land-apollo-11-on-the-moon-dies-at-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2186975","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Hamilton, whose software helped land Apollo 11 on the moon, dies at 90"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/edc3\/live\/6ef2dd00-c2e7-11f1-a64c-550be9e3c66b.jpg”]<\/p>\n

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Moment Margaret Hamilton receives Presidential Medal of Freedom<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The computer scientist behind groundbreaking research that helped land Nasa’s astronauts on the Moon, has died aged 90. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Margaret Hamilton was a trailblazer in her field, leading the team who developed the software for Nasa’s Apollo missions, which coined the term “software engineering”. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hamilton’s former employer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), confirmed her death, adding she died on 30 September. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“To say Hamilton was a pioneer – to say she was ahead of her time – would be a dramatic understatement,” MIT said in its statement, before acknowledging that she was a software engineer before it was mainstream.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hamilton worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s and managed the Software Engineering Division. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was in this division that she led a team of engineers writing and testing all onboard in-flight software for Nasa’s Apollo 11 project that guided US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to land safely on the Moon. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“I was attracted both by the sheer idea and the fact that it had never been done before. I was the first programmer to join and the first woman they hired,” she told the Guardian in 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In 1969, moments before the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing, an onboard computer raised an alarm, signalling an error was occurring.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The error detected the computer was overloaded, and for a moment it looked like the complex landing might not be achieved. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But Hamilton and her team had planned for such an error by engineering “priority-driven software” to shut down any background tasks and favour the most important – the Moon landing – according to MIT.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The team’s famous software engineering was immortalised in a 1969 photograph of Hamilton standing beside the stack of printed code that towered beside her. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"MITMIT MUSEUM<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Hamilton with the printed computer code in 1969<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In 2016, Hamilton’s life work was honoured by Barack Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to science and space travel. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At the time, Obama said Hamilton “symbolises that generation of unsung women who helped send humankind into space”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hamilton, born in Indiana in 1936, first studied mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1955 before moving to Earlham College where she got a BA in mathematics in 1958. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She then moved to Boston, Massachusetts, a year later with her husband and originally took the job at MIT to support her husband during his law degree.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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From the 1970s onwards, Hamilton used her expertise to found her own software businesses, including Hamilton Technologies, which is still based in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“We are saddened by her death, but grateful for the opportunity to have celebrated her extraordinary achievements throughout her long life”, Earlham College said in a statement on social media. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Her pioneering spirit and remarkable legacy will continue to inspire generations of Earlhamites,” the statement said. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hamilton is survived by her daughter, a son-in-law, two grandsons and four great-grandchildren, according to MIT.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"GettyGetty<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Hamilton being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then President Barack Obama in 2016<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cx5yn46j41zpo”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/edc3\/live\/6ef2dd00-c2e7-11f1-a64c-550be9e3c66b.jpg”] Moment Margaret Hamilton receives Presidential Medal of Freedom The computer scientist behind groundbreaking research that helped land Nasa’s astronauts on the Moon, has died aged 90. Margaret Hamilton was a trailblazer in her field, leading the team who developed the software for Nasa’s Apollo missions, which coined the term “software engineering”. Hamilton’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[35,226],"class_list":["post-2186975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-bbc-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2186975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2186975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2186975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2186975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}