Augusta Ada Byron was born on December 10, 1815, six months after Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. Her father was the famous poet Lord George Byron and her mother was Anne Isabelle Milbanke. Her parent’s separated a month after she was born and she never saw her father again. Resolving that her daughter would never become a poet like her father, Ada’s mother had her tutored in mathematics.
At 18 years of age, Ada Byron became interested in Charles Babbage’s analytic engine (the precursor to the hand calculator). She soon described how this new logic processor could be programmed to make it “the executive right-hand of abstract algebra,” and a short time later, her notes on how this could be done, became what many consider to be the first computer program. In 1835, Ada married William King and became the Countess of Lovelace. However, William was not endowed with the intellectual capacity to meet Ada’s cognitive needs. Seeking companionship at her intellectual level, she courted many male friends, and sought refuge in opium and wine.
Gradually, an illness that was eventually diagnosed as cancer, began to invade her life. Then on November 27, 1852, at the age of 37, after a long period of pain and suffering she passed away. Yet she retained her cognitive acuity to the very end. Her husband observed, “She mastered the mathematical side of a question in all its minuteness ... her power of generalisation was indeed most remarkable, coupled as it was with that of minute and intricate analysis.”.
