Ada Lovelace
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
March 24th is celebrated as Ada Lovelace Day, a day dedicated to celebrate the achievements of women in science and technology. On this day, people across the world have pledged to blog about their favorite female scientist.
Agusta Ada King, or simply Ada Lovelace, is credited as writing the first computer program. Ada was born in 1815 and taught mathematics at an early age, helping her develop skills that would aid her later in life. In 1833, she met Charles Babbage, inventor of the Analytical Engine.
According to Wikipedia, “During a nine-month period in 1842-43, Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea’s memoir on Babbage’s newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes. The notes are longer than the memoir itself and include in complete detail, a method for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, which would have run correctly had the Analytical Engine ever been built. Based on his work, Lovelace is now widely credited with being the first computer programmer and her method is recognized as the world’s first computer program…In 1953, over one hundred years after her death, Lovelace’s notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine were republished. The engine has now been recognized as an early model for a computer and Lovelace’s notes as a description of a computer and software.”
Letters from Lovelace
Photo courtesy of www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/…/pictures.html
Lovelace’s name is still highly well known. A U.S. Department of Defense computer language has been named after her, as well as another language named after her birth year, a sticker representing her image, and a medal in her name.
Image courtesy of findingada.com