Margaret Hamilton, a profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program, died on Sep. 30. She was 90.
A computing pioneer who authored over 130 publications, Hamilton helped to establish software engineering as a dedicated discipline. She worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s, after which she became a successful computing entrepreneur and CEO. Her life’s work was recognized with many awards, including the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
"To say Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer — to say she was ahead of her time — would be a dramatic understatement," says Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program Professor and interim head of the MIT Department Aeronautics and Astronautics. Born in Paoli, Indiana, in 1936, Hamilton earned a BA in mathematics from Earlham College in 1958. She moved to Boston in 1959 and began working at MIT on weather prediction software with Edward N. Lorenz, then on the SAGE project at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
In 1965, Hamilton was hired as the first programmer for the Apollo project at MIT. She led the team developing on-board flight software for crewed missions. By 1968 she was assistant director in charge of the Command and Service Module team, with more than 400 people working on Apollo’s software.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing