Isophoric News · Sunday, October 18, 2026
Margaret Hamilton, who directed Apollo's software team, dies at 90
Margaret Hamilton, who directed the software engineering division at MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed the computer systems for the Apollo moon missions, has died aged 90, the Guardian reported in an obituary; a Space.com contributor writes that she died Sept. 30. During the Apollo 11 landing, the Guardian says, alarms sounded in the lunar module, and Hamilton, listening from MIT, recognized from simulations that a radar switch had been left on and that the crew need not abort. The paper says she became the first programmer for Apollo at MIT and rose to lead a team of about 100, and credits her with coining the term "software engineering." She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and Smithsonian curator Andrew Meade McGee called her "a seminal figure in the creation of modern, software-driven computing."
