03/20/2021
If Lord Byron had been a present father, we might have had to wait for what many believe to be the first computer program. Lord and Lady Byron separated when their daughter, Augusta Ada, was just a few weeks old. Lord Byron left England shortly thereafter and died when Ada was 8. Ada’s mother pushed for Ada to learn mathematics and science in an attempt to prevent Ada from developing the temperament of her poet father. When Ada was 17, she met mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage. Babbage, known as the father of the computer, invented machines to perform mathematical calculations called the difference engine and the analytical engine. Ada was asked to translate an article about the analytical engine and added her own notes, which ended up being longer than the article! Her notes, published in 1843, described how codes could be created so the machine could understand letters and symbols in addition to numbers and the process known as looping that computer programs use today. Because of this work, Ada is often considered the first computer programmer. In 1835, Ada married the Earl of Lovelace, becoming the Countess of Lovelace. She is better known as Ada Lovelace. In 1980, the U.S. Department of Defense named a newly developed computer language “Ada.”
Is there a mathematician you'd like to know more about during the last week of March?
