Ada Lovelace was a computer scientist, best known for revolutionizing the field and
becoming what was essentially the first programmer. She was born to a rich and famous family,
though her parents separated, she was awarded many opportunities. While she wasn’t close to
her mother, she nonetheless wanted her daughter to be educated in math like she was. Despite
being sickly as a child, and despite how rare it was for women of the time to get math education,
Ada shone in both math and language
Ada’s mentor was the “father of computers” Charles Babbage, getting her a perspective
on the world’s earliest computers. When a French commentary on Babbage's work was
published, Ada translated it, along with providing her own notes and hypothesis. It was her
belief that you could program computers to follow complex instructions, and her notes were later
published. Ada wrote some of the earliest computer programming, and was the first to publish
such programming. Decades later, we can look from the present, where programming is
everywhere and computers are in our palms, and see just how true her hypothesis was.
Ada was also a contemporary of many influential scientists of her time, including one
MIcheal Faraday, Faraday, who was one of the biggest contributors and inspirations to
Einstein’s success, was a self-described supporter of her work. Computers, spurred on by her
contributions, have allowed a myriad of complex calculations, facilitating decades of discovery
after her. While some critics say Lovelace did little in terms of actual theory, we can see just
how far her work with Babbage and programming have come.
“Ada Lovelace.” Lemelson, lemelson.mit.edu/resources/ada-lovelace. Accessed 14 Aug.
2023.