Margaret Hamilton: Apollo Software Pioneer Timeline

Margaret Hamilton: Apollo Software Pioneer 18

1936 Margaret Hamilton born in Paoli, Indiana Born Margaret Heafield Margaret Elaine Heafield is born in Paoli, Indiana.
1958 Margaret Hamilton graduates from Earlham College BA in mathematics After a year at the University of Michigan, she completes a mathematics degree with a minor in philosophy at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.
1959 Margaret Hamilton starts programming for Edward Lorenz Weather prediction at MIT Planning graduate study in abstract mathematics, she takes a job at MIT writing weather-prediction software for meteorologist Edward Lorenz on the LGP-30 and PDP-1 computers.
1961 Margaret Hamilton joins the SAGE project MIT Lincoln Laboratory At MIT Lincoln Laboratory she writes software for SAGE, the US air-defence system, including a program that searches radar data for enemy aircraft.
1965 Margaret Hamilton leads the Apollo flight software MIT Instrumentation Laboratory At the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, later Draper Laboratory, she becomes responsible for the onboard flight software of the Apollo command and lunar modules. To win respect for the work, she starts calling it software engineering.
1968 Margaret Hamilton's team fixes the Apollo 8 memory wipe The P01 incident During Apollo 8, Jim Lovell accidentally selects program P01 and erases navigation data. Hamilton had flagged the risk after her daughter Lauren crashed the simulator the same way, and her team works out how to restore it.
1969 Margaret Hamilton photographed with the Apollo code The stack of listings An MIT photograph shows her beside printouts of the Apollo Guidance Computer source code, stacked as tall as she is — later one of the best-known images in computing history.
1969 Margaret Hamilton's software saves the Apollo 11 landing The 1202 alarms Minutes before touchdown, the lunar module computer raises 1201 and 1202 overload alarms. Her priority scheduling drops low-priority tasks and keeps landing guidance running, and the landing goes ahead.
1973 Margaret Hamilton's team writes the Skylab software Skylab After the Moon landings, her division at Draper Laboratory develops flight software for Skylab, the first American space station.
1976 Margaret Hamilton co-founds Higher Order Software With Saydean Zeldin With Saydean Zeldin she founds Higher Order Software in Cambridge, Massachusetts, building on the error-prevention ideas from Apollo.
1986 Margaret Hamilton founds Hamilton Technologies Universal Systems Language She founds Hamilton Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, developing the Universal Systems Language and its 001 Tool Suite.
1986 Margaret Hamilton receives the Ada Lovelace Award Association for Women in Computing The Association for Women in Computing gives her the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award.
2003 Margaret Hamilton receives the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award NASA NASA honours her Apollo software concepts with the Exceptional Space Act Award, the largest sum it had then given to an individual.
2016 Margaret Hamilton receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom White House President Barack Obama awards her the Presidential Medal of Freedom for leading the development of the Apollo onboard flight software.
2017 Margaret Hamilton named Computer History Museum Fellow Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum names her a Fellow for the Apollo software and for establishing software engineering as a discipline.
2017 Margaret Hamilton becomes a Lego figure Women of NASA Lego releases its Women of NASA set, with a minifigure of Hamilton beside a stack of code.
2019 Margaret Hamilton's portrait lit by mirrors in the Mojave Apollo 11 at 50 For the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, Google arranges thousands of mirrors in the Mojave Desert into a giant sunlit portrait of her.
2026 Margaret Hamilton dies aged 90 Death Margaret Hamilton dies aged 90. MIT announces her death on 7 October 2026.