Margaret Hamilton, who coined 'software engineering', dies at 90
Margaret Hamilton led the development of NASA's Apollo on-board flight software and coined the term 'software engineering'. She was 90.
Margaret Hamilton, the computer scientist who coined the term "software engineering" and led the development of NASA's Apollo on-board flight software, died last week at the age of 90, according to Ars Technica.
Hamilton's work on the Apollo program made her one of the most consequential figures in the history of computing. She led the team at MIT that built the flight software for the Apollo command and lunar modules, a system that proved critical during the Apollo 11 landing.
She was born in 1936 in Paoli, Indiana, and graduated from Earlham College in 1958 with a degree in mathematics and a minor in philosophy. In 1958 she married her first husband, James Cox Hamilton.
Before joining the Apollo effort, Hamilton worked for Edward Lorenz, the MIT mathematician who built a mathematical model of the weather. In 1961, Lorenz realized that small differences in starting values could lead to very different outcomes, a hallmark of chaos theory. Hamilton was responsible for programming the LGP-30 computer.
In the 1960s she led the development of the Apollo on-board flight software. In 2016 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2017 she was immortalized as a LEGO minifig as part of the "Women of NASA" set, which also included astronauts Mae Jemison and Sally Ride.
Quick answers
What did Margaret Hamilton do at NASA?
She led the development of on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program.
What term did Margaret Hamilton coin?
She coined the term 'software engineering'.
When was Margaret Hamilton born?
She was born in 1936 in Paoli, Indiana.