The world's first computer programmer

Ada Lovelace, a remarkable British female scientist, is often considered the first programmer in the world.

Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815 in England. She is the daughter of the poet Lord Byron, a prominent figure in the romantic movement and one of the most influential poets in Britain.

In 1933, she met the English mathematician Charles Babbage and was curious about his idea of ​​the Analytical Engine , a computational machine. In 1842, mathematician Louis Menebrea published a memoir describing the Analytical Engine. Ada then translated the text from French into English for Babbage. In the text, she gathered the initial notes explaining a specific method to implement the algorithms. Today, they are recognized as the first algorithm in history.

Portrait of Ada Lovelace in Alfred Edward Chalon's drawing in 1840. (Photo: Huffington Post)

Ada was once favored by Charles Babbage as "the woman of numbers" . Meanwhile, she considers herself a metaphysician and calls her way of thinking "poetic science" , when describing mathematics with imagination and exuberant metaphors.

Ada is one of the first to speculate on artificial intelligence (AI). Despite recognizing the extraordinary ability of computers, she still showed pessimism about AI. Ada once said: "Analytical Engine does not create the source of anything itself. It can do anything we know how to ask it to do." So far, this is still the subject of debate in the scientific world.

According to Ada's documents, this woman once saw the potential of a type of music composed with a computer. Before she fell ill, she wrote a letter to her mother, saying she was studying the connection between music and mathematics. Even later, she knew that one day, the Analytical Engine could be used to compose complex melodies.

The sample of the Analytical Engine was displayed in the Science Museum in London, England.(Photos: Wikipedia)

Ada's mother was a teacher of mathematics and science for her when she was young. This is quite a rare thing, because in that era, women were supposed to be not interested in these things. Initially, this was a method of preventing dementia, Ada's mother was worried that she might inherit from her father.

Ada once studied the ability of humans to fly. She explored the anatomy of birds and carried out many experiments, before writing an illustrated book called Flylogy.

At the age of 20, Ada and a group of male friends tried to create a mathematical model to apply in horse racing betting. However, after many failures, Ada sinks into debt and secretly brings the jewelry of her husband's family to pawn.

Like his father, Ada died at the age of 36. According to doctors, she has cervical cancer. Ada was buried next to the resting place of her father who had never met, but still had a feeling of deep connection.