As Director of the Software Engineering Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, Margaret Hamilton was responsible for the software for the Apollo program. The code she was responsible for ran the lunar lander, and brought multiple missions successfully to the surface of Luna and back to orbital rendezvous. We regret to inform you that she passed on September 30th of 2026, aged 90 years.
If you call yourself a software engineer, you have her to thank. Hamilton didn’t just help define the field through her efforts, she literally coined the term while at NASA in an effort to get “mere” programming taken more seriously. Suffice to say, that ambition was realized, and few see programmer as a low-status career these days.
After decades of obscurity, known only to those willing to dive deep into the Apollo program to discover her work there, Hamilton found deserved fame late in life. Her likeness eventually found its way to classroom posters and even an official LEGO figure. She also got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but we don’t see how that could possibly compare to being immortalized in LEGO.
Some have called her a feminist icon, blazing a trail for girls and women. While that’s true enough, it’s also thinking perhaps too small. Like the missions she did so much to make successful, Margaret Hamilton blazed a trail for all of humanity.
We wish Margaret’s family the best as she blazes a trail we all must someday follow into that one last undiscovered country. Our own biographical tribute is several years old now, but it bears rereading in light of this news.
Thanks, Margaret. You were a real inspiration to all us little nerds back in the day.
When I studied dynamical systems, our professor told us that Lorenz discovered chaotic systems because his climate models would produce different values when inputing the initial conditions from printouts, as opposed to when reaching those conditions during simulation.
I leant a decade later that the programmer that made those models run in the computer was Margaret Hamilton!
She has an interesting story, beyond the apollo program.
Oh wow, that’s a cool backstory!
Nowadays it’s hard to imagine that ‘programmer’ could be considered a lowly job title. Especially on something as mission-critical as bringing people safely to the freakin’ moon and back. We all know the necessary bureaucracy that surrounds that kind of work these days. Bravo Margaret for giving it the dignity it deserved.
Probably soon will be as lowly as elevator operator, before it was automated away.
Comouter used to be a profession, not an object!
Software engineers will still be writing the control software for private jets because billionaires won’t be entrusting their immortality-craving selves to the kind of AI slop code that they promote for the serfs.
Is it Margaret and not Margret?
Either way I hope she’ll rest in peace and I thank her for her achievements and what she bring to the early space history.
And software engineering of course!
True, and in the context of something lives depended upon, a lot of the engineering mindset was needed. No vide-coding that.
Although her story with NASA starts with a screwup!
She was with a group that put a table of landmarks into an unmanned moon mission guidance computer, and they put the table in reverse. (The mission worked out regardless.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20160131233720/http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/apollo/public/conference1/hamilton-intro.htm
Her big pushes at NASA were all about code reliability and “software engineering” and all that. I can’t help but wonder if this focus was a direct result of the initial screwup?
Sometimes a screwup is what ones need to get moved back to reality in order to become an expert in what you do.
Some other times, many big screwups keep piling up and one newer wakes up.
This morning I was ready to comment something generic since besides that picture with the code printout heap and her name I knew nothing about her. Then I stopped myself since that would not be appropiate (from my pov). Yet I understood that she was a giant that gently pushed ships on orbits and many other important stuff (that eludes me). I’ll have a drink for her tonight and perhaps, still waiting for a propper speaker for the dead (yup, Ender like), some others will do the same for her.
Here’s to Margaret!
Writing quality software requires that you always assume variables are corrupted, out of range etc. and cover that- instead of taking them for granted.
I thought the Apollo 11 CPU overrun error was due to fuel tank slosh. That was not foreseen to happen. Sensing movement as oscillations into the PID algo.
The Apollo 11 alarms were due to an electrical problem. The AGC received data from the rendezvous radar. Because there was a phase mismatch between the AGC and the radar, the radar interface generated far more interrupts than needed, overloading the AGC.
PS: All the Apollo 11 AGC source code up on Github. https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/tree/master
You fixed the “Margret” typo but missed “it bares rereading”
Thanks.
Would you trust your life to code written by LLM’s that learned to code by reading the best of human ingenuity, the worst human coders on the planet, and regurgitated AI slop. Where all are treated with the equal value.
People like Margaret (Grace, and eventually Knuth – he is still alive!) will missed by future generations. We are entering a really uncertain period of computer history, at least until AGI arrives, then unemployed will be a job for most, when you can have Einstein in a box to flip burgers :-)
I know plenty of intelligent humans who can’t code for toffee. What makes you think AGI will be any better?
Interesting that she shares a name with a famous actress.