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Margaret Hamilton
Margaret Hamilton · Daphne Weld Nichols, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Person

Margaret Hamilton

1936 – 2026 · aged 90

American mathematician and designer of embedded computer systems (1936–2026)

Born
17 Aug 1936 · Paoli
Died
30 Sept 2026 · Cambridge

Life timeline

Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.

Showing 103 years
  1. 17 Aug 1936BornBorn in Paoli
  2. 1986AwardAda Lovelace Award
  3. 2016AwardPresidential Medal of Freedom
  4. 2017AwardComputer History Museum Fellow
  5. 2018AwardHonorary doctor of the University Polytechnic of Catalonia
  6. 2019AwardHonorary doctorate from Bard College
  7. 2019AwardWashington Award
  8. 2022AwardNational Aviation Hall of Fame
  9. 2024AwardHonorary doctor of the University of Michigan
  10. 2025AwardDoctor of Science (honorary)
  11. 30 Sept 2026DiedDied in Cambridge

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Meanwhile in the world

Major world events during their lifetime (1936 – 2026).

  1. 19361936 Summer Olympics
  2. 1937 – 1945Second Sino-Japanese War
  3. 19381938 FIFA World Cup
  4. 1938Munich Agreement
  5. 1939 – 1940Winter War
  6. 1939 – 1945World War II
  7. 1940 – 1945Auschwitz concentration camp
  8. 1941Attack on Pearl Harbor
  9. 1941 – 1945Eastern Front
  10. 1941Operation Barbarossa
  11. 1942 – 1943Battle of Stalingrad
  12. 1945Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  13. 1945 – 1946Nuremberg trials
  14. 19501950 FIFA World Cup
  15. 1950 – 1953Korean War
  16. 1953 – 1959Cuban Revolution
  17. 19541954 FIFA World Cup
  18. 1955 – 1975Vietnam War
  19. 1956Hungarian Revolution of 1956
  20. 1956Suez Crisis
  21. 19581958 FIFA World Cup
  22. 1959Antarctic Treaty System
  23. 19621962 FIFA World Cup
  24. 1962Cuban Missile Crisis
  25. 19661966 FIFA World Cup
  26. 1966 – 1976Cultural Revolution
  27. 1968Prague Spring
  28. 1969Apollo 11 Moon landing
  29. 19721972 Summer Olympics
  30. 19741974 FIFA World Cup
  31. 19781978 FIFA World Cup
  32. 1978 – 1979Iranian Revolution
  33. 1979 – 1989Soviet–Afghan War
  34. 1980 – 1988Iran–Iraq War
  35. 19841984 Summer Olympics
  36. 1985Schengen Agreement
  37. 19891989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
  38. 1989Fall of the Berlin Wall
  39. 19901990 FIFA World Cup
  40. 1991Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Biography

Margaret Elaine Hamilton (née Heafield; August 17, 1936 – September 30, 2026) was an American computer scientist. She directed the Software Engineering Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, where she led the development of the on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo Guidance Computer for the Apollo program. She later founded the software companies Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies in 1986 — both in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hamilton published more than 130 papers, proceedings, and reports, about sixty projects, and six major programs. She coined the term software engineering, stating, "I began to use the term 'software engineering' to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process."

On November 22, 2016, Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama for her work leading to the development of on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo moon missions.

Text from the Wikipedia article Margaret Hamilton (software engineer), CC BY-SA 4.0

About this information

Dates and life events come from this person’s Wikidata entry.

We only show events that the sources give a date for. Anything without a date is left out rather than guessed.