Who was Ada Lovelace?
Quick answer
Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) was an English mathematician known for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed Analytical Engine, a mechanical general-purpose computer. In 1843, she published notes that included a step-by-step method for the machine to calculate Bernoulli numbers, often called the first computer program.
Key facts
- Full name
- Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace
- Born
- December 10, 1815, London
- Died
- November 27, 1852, aged 36
- Father
- The poet Lord Byron
The poet’s daughter
Ada was the only legitimate child of the famous poet Lord Byron, who left the family when she was a baby; she never knew him. Her mother, Lady Byron, who loved mathematics, insisted Ada study math and science, partly hoping to steer her away from her father’s wild, poetic temperament.
Meeting Babbage
At 17, Ada met inventor Charles Babbage, who was designing calculating machines:
| Machine | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Difference Engine | Calculated tables of numbers automatically |
| Analytical Engine | A programmable machine, with memory and a “mill” (processor), using punched cards |
The Analytical Engine was never completed in his lifetime, but its design contained the key parts of a modern computer.
The famous notes
In 1843, Ada translated an article by Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea about the Analytical Engine and added her own notes, which were about three times longer than the article. In Note G, she set out an algorithm for calculating Bernoulli numbers.
She also suggested the engine might one day compose music or work with symbols of any kind, an insight about general-purpose computing that took about a century to come true. Historians still debate how much of the program was Ada’s own work and how much Babbage’s.
Legacy
- The US Department of Defense named a programming language Ada after her in 1980.
- Ada Lovelace Day, on the second Tuesday of October, celebrates women in science, technology, engineering and math.
- She’s often described as a pioneer who combined imagination and mathematics, which she called “poetical science.”
For another computing pioneer, see who Alan Turing was. For what a computer is, see what a computer is.
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