Margaret Hamilton: key obituary facts
Is Margaret Hamilton dead? Yes. Margaret Hamilton died on September 30, 2026, at age 90.
Cause of death: Margaret Hamilton's cause of death has not been publicly confirmed.
What was Margaret Hamilton known for?
She was an American NASA scientist and mathematician (1936-2026).
More about Margaret Hamilton
Born: 17 August 1936.
Place of birth: Paoli.
Gender: female.
Occupation: computer scientist, mathematician, engineer, businessperson, software developer.
Nationality: United States.
Education: Earlham College, University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
Employer: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Awards: Presidential Medal of Freedom, Ada Lovelace Award, honorary doctor of the University Polytechnic of Catalonia, Computer History Museum Fellow, Washington Award, National Aviation Hall of Fame.
Also known as: Margaret Heafield Hamilton, Margaret Heafield, Margaret Elaine Hamilton, Margaret Elaine Heafield.
Margaret Hamilton, an American computer scientist and software engineer, died September 30, 2026, aged 90.
Born Margaret Elaine Heafield in Paoli, Indiana, she became a central figure in the development of software for the Apollo program. At MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory, she directed its Software Engineering Division and led work on the onboard flight software for NASA’s Apollo Guidance Computer.
The software supported the Apollo missions, and her work brought greater attention to software development as an engineering field. Hamilton said she began using the term “software engineering” to distinguish the work from hardware engineering while treating both as parts of systems engineering. In 1976, she founded Higher Order Software; a decade later, she established Hamilton Technologies. Both companies were based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her professional output included more than 130 papers, proceedings and reports, alongside work on about 60 projects and six major programs. In 2016, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, recognizing her leadership in the development of onboard flight software for NASA’s Apollo Moon missions.