Ada Lovelace

Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, Ada Lovelace commonly known as Augusta Ada Byron was born as ( born December 10, 1815 in London, † November 27, 1852 ibid ) was a British mathematician. For a never- finished mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine, she wrote the first program. For this reason it is called - considered the first programmer in the world - even before the first male counterparts. The Ada programming language and the Lovelace Medal was named after her.

Life

Augusta Ada Byron was born December 10, 1815, the daughter of Anne Isabella Noel Byron, 11th Baroness Wentworth and Lord Byron; He had three children by three women, only Ada was born in wedlock. Her mother pulled due to ongoing disputes with Lord Byron on January 16, 1816, together with the one months old Ada to her parents in Kirkby Mallory. You could tell her husband, a medical examination to be insane so that she could take despite legal provisions, in the event of a separation awards for fathers sole custody of their daughter. On April 21, 1816 Lord Byron signed a separation certificate and left England a few days later. Lord Byron had no relationship with his daughter; he died when Ada was nine years old. Adas mathematically interested mother, who had studied geometry and astronomy, Ada enabled a scientific training, during which she met the mathematician Mary Somerville and Charles Babbage, whose assistant she was.

At age 19, married Ada Byron William King, 8th Baron King ( 1805-1893 ), who was raised in 1838 to the 1st Earl of Lovelace. He also had a math education and settled, since women were forbidden at this time of access to libraries, Ada 's sake take to the Royal Society, where he copied for her article. She gave birth to three children at very short intervals, one of her daughters was Anne Blunt, 15th Baroness Wentworth. In his correspondence with Mary Somerville, she wrote that she would lead an unhappy marriage because her stay next pregnancies and child care so little time for her studies of mathematics and its other passion, music. To distract herself, she plunged into the social life and had several affairs. With great enthusiasm she bet on horses. The last years of her life, which she spent on the basis of cervical cancer in bed, she is developing a mathematically sophisticated "safe" have spent betting system. Ada Lovelace died at the age of 36 years.

Work

1843 translated the custom built by the Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea on Babbage's Analytical Engine Description of the French into English, adding your own notes and reflections on the construction of these planned mechanical calculating machine. Babbage's machine was never built during his lifetime. On the one hand the precision engineering was not yet developed enough to produce machine parts in the requisite precision, on the other hand, the British parliament stopped funding after Babbage had his designs changed too often. Nevertheless, Ada Lovelace presented a written plan of how to calculate Bernoulli numbers with the machine. This algorithm won her the honor of having written the first computer program. Therefore, the Ada programming language was named after her later.

Others

In the 2009 novel, The woman for whom I invented the computer by Friedrich Christian Delius Ada Lovelace is in the imagination of the computer pioneer Konrad Zuse as a muse and secret lover.

In Australia, founded by Valerie Aurora and Mary Gardiner 2011 Ada Initiative was named after Lovelace, which advocates for increased female participation in the open source environment.

Film

• The film Passionate calculation ( " Conceiving Ada ", USA 1997) by Lynn Hershman Leeson - (Director ) is based on Lovelace's life.