ADA LOVELACE ~ MATHEMATICIAN
British mathematician, Ada Lovelace was the daughter of famed poet Lord Byron.
Her parents legally separated two months after her birth.
Her father then left Britain, and his daughter never knew him personally.
Ada was educated privately by tutors and then continued to educate herself.
She was helped in her advanced studies by mathematician-logician Augustus De Morgan, the first professor of mathematics at the University of London.
On 8th July 1835, Ada married William King, 8th Baron King, and, when he was created an earl in 1838, she became countess of Lovelace.
The couple had two sons and a daughter.
Ada became interested in Babbage’s Analytical Machine, as early as 1833 when she was introduced to Babbage by a mutual friend.
An Analytical Engine, is generally considered the first computer, designed and partly built by the English inventor Charles Babbage in the 19th century.
In 1843 Ada, came to translate and annotate an article written by the Italian mathematician and engineer Luigi Federico Menabrea,
Her detailed and elaborate annotations (especially her description of how the proposed Analytical Engine could be programmed to compute Bernoulli numbers) were excellent.
Supplementing her findings with an elaborate set of writings, simply called “Notes,” these are important in the early history of computers, containing what many consider to be the first computer program—that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine.
The Analytical Engine was to be a general-purpose, fully program-controlled, automatic mechanical digital computer.
It would be able to perform any calculation set before it.
Babbage only built a small part of the Analytical Engine, but Ada’s efforts and participation have been remembered.
The early programming language Ada was named for her, and the second Tuesday in October has become Ada Lovelace Day, on which the contributions of women to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are honoured.
Ada Lovelace died at the age of 36 on 27th November 1852, from uterine cancer.
Portrait by Margaret Sarah Carpenter ~ 1836.
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