US – Margaret Hamilton, the American pioneer of the “Apollo” programme, dies

WASHINGTON, 8 October /ATSH-AFP/ – Margaret Hamilton, the American scientist who led the development of the computer system used in the “Apollo” lunar programme, has died at the age of 90, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she worked for nearly two decades, announced.

“Margaret Hamilton, an immensely influential computer scientist, known for leading the team responsible for the development of the computer system at MIT during NASA’s ‘Apollo’ programme, passed away on 30 September. She was 90 years old,” MIT announced on its website.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman described Hamilton as a “pioneer, whose work helped make the ‘Apollo’ programme and humanity’s first journeys to the Moon possible”.

“The best way to honour her legacy is to continue where her generation stopped and not rest from moving forward,” Isaacman wrote on the social network X.

The “Apollo” programme enabled the United States to win the race with the Soviet Union for the exploration of the Moon during the 1960s and 1970s.

The “Apollo 11” mission achieved the first landing of humans on the Moon in 1969.

Born in 1936 in Indiana, Margaret Hamilton studied mathematics before working in MIT’s meteorology department and then on the first American air defence projects.

In 1965, she joined MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory, which worked on the development of aeronautical instruments and was looking for specialists to create a computer programme that would make it possible to send humans to the Moon.

Intrigued by the challenge, Hamilton was hired as the first programmer of the “Apollo” programme at MIT, also becoming the first woman programmer on this project.

In 1968, she led the team responsible for developing the lunar programme’s software. Her work played an important role in the functioning of “Apollo’s” guidance computer, especially during the “Apollo 11” landing on the Moon.

In 1976, Hamilton left MIT to found her own computer company.

She became one of the best-known figures of women in science and computing.

Her image next to a huge stack of computer code, almost as tall as she was, became one of the most iconic photographs in the history of programming.

Margaret Hamilton’s legacy is linked not only to the success of the “Apollo” programme, but also to the development of important concepts in software engineering, a term she herself helped to popularise.