Beauty Ada Lovelace - the world's first female programmer

(Baonghean.vn) - A talented mathematician, Ada Lovelace also wrote the first computer programming commands in the mid-19th century.

Portrait of Ada Lovelace. Photo: Internet.

Noble lineage

Ada Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron, was the only daughter of the famous poet George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron. The marriage between Baron Byron and Ada's mother, Lady Anne Isabella Milbanke Byron, was not a happy one. Just 1 week after her daughter was born in 1815 in England, Mrs. Byron separated from her husband. A few months later, Baron Byron left England, and Ada never saw her father again. He died in Greece when Ada was only 8 years old.

Despite her aristocratic background, Ada’s upbringing was very different from that of a mid-1800s aristocratic young lady. At her mother’s request, she was taught mathematics and science. Such rigorous subjects were not considered necessary for a girl of the time, but Ada’s mother believed that engaging in such rigorous studies would prevent Lovelace from developing the emotional and unpredictable temperament of her father. Ada was also required by her mother to lie still for long periods of time, because she believed that this would help her daughter develop self-control.

From an early age, Lovelace showed a talent for mathematics and languages. Ada received guidance from William Frend, a social reformer, William King, the family doctor, and Mary Somerville, a Scottish astronomer and mathematician. Somerville was also one of the first women to join the Royal Astronomical Society.

Life as a scientist

At the age of 17, Ada met mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage. The two became lifelong friends, and the older Babbage became Ada's mentor. Through Babbage's intermediary, Ada began studying advanced mathematics with University of London professor Augustus de Morgan.

Ada was deeply interested in Babbage’s ideas. Known as the father of the computer, he had invented the difference engine to perform calculations. Ada had the opportunity to see the machine before it was completed, and was “fascinated” by it. Babbage also came up with plans to build another device called the analytical engine, to attempt more complex calculations.

Ada was then asked to translate an article on Babbage's Analytical Engine written by Italian engineer Luigi Federico Menabrea for a Swiss newspaper. She not only translated the original French text into English, but also added her own thoughts and ideas about the machine. Her additional notes ended up being three times longer than the original article. Her work was later published in 1843 in a British scientific journal. Ada used only the initials AAL instead of Augusta Ada Lovelace as a pseudonym for the article.

Ada is considered the first female programmer in the era when mathematics was considered "men's work". Photo: Internet.

In her notes, Ada described how to create code that would allow the device to process letters and symbols, not just numbers. She also theorized about how to have a machine repeat a series of instructions, a process known as “looping,” which is used in computer programs today. Ada also introduced many of the ideas that motivated her thinking in the paper. Because of her work, Ada is often considered the world’s first computer programmer.

Ada’s writings did not receive much attention during her lifetime. In the years that followed, she attempted to develop mathematical programs that would help her win at gambling. Unfortunately, these programs were unsuccessful, and she was left in financial straits. On November 27, 1852, Ada died in London of uterine cancer. She was buried next to her father in the cemetery of St. Mary Magdalene Church in Nottingham.

Heritage

Ada Lovelace’s contributions to computer science were not discovered until the 1950s. Her notes were brought to the world again by BV Bowden, who republished Ada’s intellectual output in Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines. Since then, Ada has been posthumously awarded many honors. In 1980, the US Department of Defense even named a newly developed computer language “Ada” after Lovelace, the world’s first female programmer.

Thu Giang

(According to Biography)