Ada Lovelace (1815 - 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, a forerunner of computer science and programming. She is famous for having studied the analytical engine of Charles Babbage, for which she wrote an algorithm considered the first to be used in a computer apparatus..
Her given name was Augusta Ada Byron and she was the daughter of the romantic author George Gordon Bryon, known as Lord Byron. From a very young age the girl was encouraged by her mother to focus her academic studies on mathematics.
Ada Byron married Lord William King in 1835, with whom she had three children. The author and mathematician became known as Countess Lovelace after her husband was converted to Earl Lovelace in 1838..
Lovelace's friendship and intellectual relationship with Babbage began in 1833. Ten years later, when she wrote down Luigi Menabrea's article on the Analytical Engine, Babbage understood Lovelace's true genius..
She was the first to realize the potential of Babbage's proposed computing device. Lovelace perceived that this machine was a tool that transcended the resolution of mathematical problems and could serve as support to society in other areas.
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Augusta Ada Byron was born on December 10, 1815, in London, England. She was the only legitimate daughter of the short marriage between Baron George Gordon Byron, the famous English poet who marked the era of Romanticism, and Baroness Anne Isabella Noel Byron.
Ada's parents had married in January 1815 and the following year, Lord Byron asked his wife to settle in with her parents while he solved his financial situation..
Anne had long thought her husband had lost his mind, so she took his advice and took little Ada to Kirkby Mallory, Leicestershire. Although she tried to regain her relationship with Lord Byron for a time, Anne decided months later that she should apply for legal separation..
After breaking the bond with Ada's mother, Lord Byron left England and never returned. That is why the girl had no relationship with her father, despite the fact that he tried to keep informed of his daughter's condition through his half-sister Augusta Leigh..
Ada Byron's upbringing and education was left to her mother; however, the two were never very close and most of Ada's childhood was under the care of her grandmother Lady Judith Milbanke..
When Ada Byron was eight years old, her father died in Greece, where he was fighting in the war of independence. That same year, traits of physical weakness began to appear in the girl, such as migraines, which haunted her for the rest of her life..
During 1829 Ada Byron contracted measles, for which she spent almost a whole year of rest.
Female education in England during the 19th century was scarce, but Ada's mother made it a point for her daughter to receive first-rate instruction, so she hired tutors for her.
Lady Byron was afraid that her daughter would inherit her father's erratic character, so she ordered the girl to specialize in mathematics and logic. In addition, she had teachers of literature, history, French, geography and common areas for women of her time such as music and sewing..
Ada Byron's tutors included William Frend, an expert in arithmetic and algebra; Augustus De Morgan, student of mathematics and logic; and Mary Somerville, one of the most famous polymaths of her time.
As was customary, Ada Byron was introduced to court at seventeen. At that time, she was already a very cultured girl, as well as beautiful, which is why she was one of the most desirable young women for singles of the time.
In the middle of 1835 she married Baron William King and, from that moment, became Lady Ada King. The couple's first child, Byron, was born in May 1836.
Ada gave birth to her only daughter in September 1837 and was christened after her maternal grandmother as Anne Isabella. The youngest of the children, Ralph Gordon, came into the world in July 1839.
William King was appointed by Queen Victoria as Viscount of Ockham and Earl of Lovelace in 1838. Ada took the title of Countess of Lovelace and was known as Ada Lovelace thereafter..
Earl Lovelace supported Ada's passion for education. In fact, from 1841 on, she decided to resume her studies and set aside a few hours daily to dedicate herself to her intellectual activities..
Lovelace and her husband were related to scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday, among their friends was also the author Charles Dickens.
Ada Lovelace met Charles Babbage in 1833 through her tutor and friend Mary Somerville. Although she was only 17 years old, the mathematician realized the potential that the girl had and began to act as a kind of scientific mentor for Lovelace..
Babbage showed him an artifact he had created before finishing it: the differential engine, a calculator that was used to solve polynomial functions. In addition, Babbage spoke to Lovelace about his ideas for creating a new apparatus that he called the analytical engine..
Lovelace was impressed by Babbage's project. The mathematician's plan was to build a machine that could not only perform operations, but could also act based on what was calculated, so that it was capable of performing more complex processes..
Ada Lovelace passed away on November 27, 1852, in Marylebone, London. The scientist had suffered from uterine cancer for a time.
Her mother was with her during her last days, a probable reason for Ada's isolation from her friends and family. She was buried next to her father, Lord Byron, in St Mary Magdalene's Church in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.
From a young age she was prone to illness and physical ailments, so Ada used to take opiates regularly (a common practice at the time). In addition, she was advised to take her medications with alcohol, which caused constant mood swings in her. Lovelace and her husband became estranged shortly before the death of the intellectual.
Among the excessive behaviors Ada had displayed before her death was her compulsion to gamble on horse races, in which she lost nearly £ 3,000 in the 1940s..
Between 1842 and 1843, Ada Lovelace worked to translate the article into English Notions sur la machine analytique by M. Charles Babbage created by the Italian mathematician, politician, diplomat and military Luigi Menabrea about the analytical machine.
In addition, Lovelace was encouraged by her mentor to write an appendix that she called "Notes," which included her insights, conclusions, and proposals for the calculation apparatus..
The notes on English mathematics were longer than Menabrea's original text. He proposed a code so that the analytical engine could process letters and symbols, as well as numbers.
This is how Lovelace postulated that this artifact could be used beyond mathematical calculations in processes such as, for example, musical composition, something that had not been previously proposed..
It should be noted that Charles Babbage's analytical engine was never made, so none of the proposals that were made around that device could be demonstrated in a timely manner..
Among the notes that Ada Lovelace made regarding the analytical engine there is a special fragment: Babbage showed her a complicated formula that had been proposed by him and would serve to program the analytical engine in the calculation of Bernoulli numbers.
However, Lovelace found that Babbage's statement had errors and corrected it, which is why she is considered the first computer programmer in history. This point has been debated, since the original idea was Babbage's and Lovelace only corrected it..
Ada Lovelace did not believe that the analytical machine could have the ability to anticipate something that had not been expressly programmed by means of a code, so it is said that she did not believe that artificial intelligence could exist.
Influenced by the operation of the Jacquard loom, which was used during the Industrial Revolution to create patterns on fabrics, Ada Lovelace suggested the use of punch cards as a method of giving instructions to the analytical machine..
For a time she was interested in creating mathematical equations that represented the functioning of the human brain, something she called "calculations about the nervous system", but she never finished that work..
- The Ada computational language, created by the United States Department of Defense in 1980, was named in honor of Ada Lovelace.
- The Association for Women in Computing created the Ada Lovelace Award in 1981.
- The British Computer Society also named his recognition the Lovelace Medal, in honor of mathematics in 1998.
- An organization called the Ada Initiative proposed the creation of Ada Lovelace Day, which has been celebrated on the second Tuesday in October of every year since 2009..
- In 2015, the bicentennial of the birth of Ada Lovelace was celebrated with various activities, especially in Great Britain. Lectures were held at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies and at the University of Oxford.
An exhibition was also held at the London Science Museum and Oxford's Weston Library in the framework of Lovelace's bicentennial..
- During 2015 there was another gesture to honor Ada Lovelace, a portrait of her was included on page 46 of all British passports issued from November of that year to the present..
- The Senate of the United States of America designated October 9, 2018 as National Ada Lovelace Day.
Some institutions have taken the name Ada Lovelace to highlight her legacy, this is the case of Ada College (London), Ada Byron Building (at the University of Zaragoza) and the Ada Developers Academy (Seattle).
Some companies have decided to pay tribute to the legacy of Ada Lovelace; In the case of Google, they dedicated a Doodle to it during International Women's Day in November 2017. The following year, the Stellogic company sent a micro satellite into space, nicknamed Ada.
- “For me, religion is science and science is religion. In that deeply felt truth lies the secret of my intense devotion to reading the natural works of God. ".
- "The more I study, the more insatiable I feel about it my genius".
- "The machine is the material expression of any undefined function, of any degree of generality and complexity".
- "The intellectual, the moral, the religious, all seem to me naturally linked and interrelated in a great and harmonious whole".
- “The analytical engine has no claim to originate anything. You can do anything that we know how to order you to do. You can follow analysis; but it has no power to anticipate analytical relationships or truths ".
- What is imagination? It is a divine, noble faculty. It makes the earth tolerable, it teaches us to live, in the tone of the eternal ".
- "The analytical machine weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves".
- “I do not regret the sufferings and peculiarities of my physical constitution. They have taught me, and continue to teach me, what I think nothing else could have developed. It is a force and a control imposed on me by Providence and that I must obey ".
- "I can cast rays from all corners of the universe into a vast focus ... My course is so clear and obvious that it is delightful to think how straight it is".
- "Our family is an alternative stratification of poetry and mathematics".
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