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Ada Lovelace

1815–1852 · British

Computing

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron and a mathematician who collaborated with Charles Babbage on his proposed Analytical Engine. Her 1843 translation of Luigi Menabrea's paper on the engine, with her own much longer Notes, included an algorithm for computing Bernoulli numbers that is often called the first computer program. She also foresaw that such machines could manipulate symbols such as music, not just numbers, and is celebrated as a pioneer of computing.

How to spot them

▸Daughter of Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke
▸Notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine; Note G and the Bernoulli numbers
▸'The first computer programmer'; the Ada programming language
▸'Enchantress of Number'; 'poetical science'
▸Ada Lovelace Day, the second Tuesday of October

Key discoveries & works

Translation of Menabrea's 'Sketch of the Analytical Engine', with Notes (1843)

Her appended Notes A to G were about three times longer than the paper itself

Note G: an algorithm to compute Bernoulli numbers (1843)

A step-by-step plan for the Analytical Engine, often called the first published computer program

Prediction that a computing engine could compose elaborate pieces of music (1843)

Saw that a machine manipulating symbols could go beyond pure calculation

'The Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves' (1843)

Her famous comparison of Babbage's punched-card engine with the Jacquard loom

Key ideas

General-purpose computation: a machine operating on symbols of any kind, not just numbers
Her remark that the engine 'has no pretensions whatever to originate anything' was later discussed by Turing as 'Lady Lovelace's Objection'
'Poetical science': combining imagination with mathematical rigour

Quick-fire facts

•Born Augusta Ada Byron in London on 10 December 1815; her parents separated weeks later and she never knew her father
•Her mother encouraged mathematics partly to counter any Byronic 'poetic' tendencies
•Tutored by Augustus De Morgan; Mary Somerville was a friend and mentor
•Met Charles Babbage in 1833, when she was 17
•Married William King in 1835; he became Earl of Lovelace in 1838
•Died of cancer in 1852 aged 36, the same age as her father at his death, and was buried beside him at Hucknall, Nottinghamshire
•The US Department of Defense's programming language Ada (1980) is named after her
•Babbage called her the 'Enchantress of Number'

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Sources

MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews — Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace
Christopher Hollings, Ursula Martin and Adrian Rice — Ada Lovelace: The Making of a Computer Scientist