Departures of note

Margaret Hamilton was an American computer scientist who directed the Software Engineering Division at MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory, where she led the development of the on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo Guidance Computer. Her team's work was credited with helping Apollo 11 complete its lunar landing in July 1969, when the software handled a series of unexpected computer alarms during the descent. She is widely credited with coining the term "software engineering" to describe the discipline.

Born in Paoli, Indiana, she earned a degree in mathematics from Earlham College in 1958 and began working at MIT in 1959, first on weather-prediction software and later on the SAGE air-defense project. She joined the Apollo program in 1965 and became the first female programmer on the project, eventually overseeing the software for the Command and Lunar Modules and Skylab.

After leaving MIT in the mid-1970s, she co-founded Higher Order Software in 1976 and later founded Hamilton Technologies in 1986, developing the Universal Systems Language. She published more than 130 papers and received numerous honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. She died on September 30, 2026, at the age of 90.