Margaret Hamilton, who led software development at MIT during NASA's Apollo program, died on Sept. 30 at age 90, MIT said. Her work helped produce the onboard flight software used for the Apollo missions, including Apollo 11's Moon landing.
Hamilton worked at MIT from 1959 to the mid-1970s, managing its Software Engineering Division and leading engineers who wrote and tested flight software. The reports say her work helped establish software engineering as a discipline; MIT said the Apollo effort also coined the term. She later became a computing entrepreneur and chief executive, according to Hacker News. Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.