Ada Lovelace
Early Life and Family Background
Augusta Ada King (now commonly known as Ada Lovelace) was born on December 10, 1815, to the well-regarded poet Lord Byron and his wife Anne Byron. Lord Byron, a restless man who had conceived other children out of wedlock, left his wife in a bitter divorce just weeks after Ada's birth. Following the separation, he headed immediately to Europe, where he died in Greece several years later, never having seen his daughter again. Anne Byron, forever averse to what she perceived as 'dangerous' poetic tendencies after her troubling experiences with her wayward former husband, began from an early age trying to prevent the young Ada from following too closely in her father's footsteps. Some of Anne's strategies were relatively draconian - Ada was not permitted, for example, to look at any portraits of her father until she reached adulthood at twenty years of age.
Ada's Education and Early Interests But others proved fortuitous. Attempting to nudge Ada away from poetry, literature, and other pursuits that she feared would encourage caprice and self-indulgence in her daughter's young mind, Anne instead focused Ada's attention on areas of study that required more discipline and sober calculation instead: music and mathematics. It was through the latter that Ada found her calling, and eventually her place in the history books. Although it was unusual for young women of her era to pursue mathematics as a discipline, and Ada did not enjoy the privilege of formal education, her position in society allowed her access to some of the greatest minds of her day. Among these tutors was Mary Somerville, a noted mathematician and astronomer, whose legacy is continued in the naming of women's colleges around the world. Another tutor, logician Augustus De Morgan, informed Anne that her daughter had the potential to become 'an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence'.
Introduction to Charles Babbage It was through Somerville that Ada was introduced to the researcher who would play the greatest role in shaping her legacy: Charles Babbage, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was widely known for having invented and developed the Difference Engine, a calculating machine more advanced than any of its time. In 1834, Babbage wanted to develop another, even more sophisticated apparatus, An Analytical Engine. Although he enjoyed great prestige, being a founder of the Astronomical Society, and a member of international organizations including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, his sponsors were reluctant to support his Analytical Engine project, and for some time, it appeared as if Babbage's intentions would never be fulfilled.
Collaboration with Babbage and Contributions Assistance eventually came from the Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea, who produced a memoir documenting the Analytical Engine. The memoir was published in French, however, and Babbage recruited Ada to help make it accessible to an English-speaking audience. Over a nine-month period during 1842-1843, Ada devoted herself to completing the work, eventually producing not only an English version of Menabrea's work but a set of appendices longer than the original document itself. In these appendices, Ada wrote a detailed account, in section G, of how a sequence of Bernoulli numbers could be calculated using the Analytical Engine. Although the Engine was never built, retrospective studies have concluded that Ada's calculations would have been correct had the Engine existed at the time.
Debate on Ada's Role and Legacy In addition to her mathematical accuracy, Ada's other notes, some more speculative, show an awareness of computing potential that went beyond mere number crunching. Ada anticipated advances, such as computer-generated music, which would not be fully realized until a century and a half later. For these contributions, Ada has been dubbed the 'first computer programmer'. Not everyone is convinced that Ada deserves this title, however. Some historians have suggested that Ada functioned more as an editor or compiler rather than as a mathematician in her own right. Others defend her role and emphasize her conceptual vision of computing.
Ada's Legacy Disputes aside, Ada's legacy in both computing and the wider popular imagination is now firmly established. The British Computer Society now awards a medal bearing her name, and the United States Department of Defense has named a computer language, Ada, in her honor. In addition, a number of organizations, inspired by the example she set, also foster the development of women in the fields of computing, science, and technology.
