“I am more than ever now the bride of science. Religion to me is science, and science is religion” —Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace. (1815-1852) was decades ahead of her time. Women were rare in science, technology, engineering and mathematics the 19th century, but from a young age, science and technology were Ada's passions.
Daughter of the infamous romantic poet, Lord Byron, and the daughter of devout mathematician, Baroness Wentworth, Lovelace as herself a woman of logic. A student of Augustus De Morgan, she worked extensively with the inventor and philosopher Charles Babbage (1791-1871) and was fascinated by his designs for a theoretical general-purpose computer, which he called the Analytical Engine.
In 1843, while writing about the Analytical Engine, Lovelace developed the first known example of a computer language. Creating a notation for algorithms and their execution, she used her language to design example programs to run on the machine. Today, Ada Lovelace is widely recognised as the world's first computer programmer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
Public domain image of a watercolour portrait of Ada Lovelace attributed to Alfred Edward Chalon (c.1840) via the Science Museum Group on Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/5NH2
“I am more than ever now the bride of science. Religion to me is science, and science is religion” —Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace. (1815-1852) was decades ahead of her time. Women were rare in science, technology, engineering and mathematics the 19th century, but from a young age, science and technology were Ada's passions.
Daughter of the infamous romantic poet, Lord Byron, and the daughter of devout mathematician, Baroness Wentworth, Lovelace as herself a woman of logic. A student of Augustus De Morgan, she worked extensively with the inventor and philosopher Charles Babbage (1791-1871) and was fascinated by his designs for a theoretical general-purpose computer, which he called the Analytical Engine.
In 1843, while writing about the Analytical Engine, Lovelace developed the first known example of a computer language. Creating a notation for algorithms and their execution, she used her language to design example programs to run on the machine. Today, Ada Lovelace is widely recognised as the world's first computer programmer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
Public domain image of a watercolour portrait of Ada Lovelace attributed to Alfred Edward Chalon (c.1840) via the Science Museum Group on Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/5NH2