Who is Augusta Ada Lovelace?

Augusta Ada Byron best known as Ada Lovelace was born in London, England on December 10, 1815. She was born with enthusiastic talent with 
numbers and letters, a gifted mathematician and writer.She was the only legitimate child of Lord George Gordon Byron, the most famous poet her
father and her mother, Lady Anne Isabella Milbanke Byron.

Childhood and Early Life


On her childhood, her father was expecting a baby boy but felt disappointed because the glorious baby boy he was expecting became a baby girl. Augusta was named after her father's half sister, Augusta Leight and she was called Ada by his father himself. Her parent's marriage was not a happy one. Lady Byron separated from her husband only weeks after Ada was born. Although the full custody of their children in cases of separation will be given to the father but Ada's father made no attempt and gave up in claiming his parental rights but then he requested to his sister to keep him informed of Ada's welfare. On April 21 George Byron signed the Deed of Separation and after that he left England for good a few days later. Aside from their separation, Lady Anne continually made allegations about her husband's behaviour throughout her life. On January 16, 1816, Lady Byron left for her parent's home at Kirkby Mallory and Ada was just one-month old that time. A few months later, when Ada's father left England, Ada never saw her father again. He died in Greece when Ada was 8 years old. Her mother was the only significant parental figure in her life but did not have a close relationship with her mother because she was often left with the care or her grandmother, Judith. Her mother was afraid Ada might inherit the "poetic" temperament of his father, Lady Byron raised her daughter on a program of mathematics, logic, and strict discipline and was successful at turning her daughter into a mathematician, but totally failed to make her into a proper Victorian lady. In spite of her mother's efforts, Ada had her father's volatile, subversive nature and enjoyed shocking her stuffy society. And it is said that Ada Lovelace was described as the most vulgar women in England. At the age of eight, Ada was often ill. She experience headaches that obscured her vision. In June 1829, she was paralyzed after out of measles and confined nearly a year. By 1831, she was able to walk with crutches. Despite being ill, Ada pursued and developed her mathematical and technological skills. From early on, Lovelace showed a talent for numbers and language. She received instruction from William Frend, a social reformer; William King, the family's doctor; and Mary Somerville, a Scottish astronomer and mathematician.

Career


In 1833, At the age of 17, Ada met Charles Babbage and he was 42, a mathematician and inventor through their mutual friend Mary Samerville. They became friends, and Babbage served as Ada's mentor. Through Babbage, Ada began studying advanced mathematics with University of London professor Augustus de Morgan. Charles Babbage was the father of computer. And also Babbage invited Lovelace to see the prototype for his Difference Engine. Because of the analytical and intellectual skills of Lovelace, Babbage was impressed by her and called Ada as "Enchantress of Numbers". Babbage had made plans in 1834 for a new kind of calculating machine although the Difference Engine was not finished, an Analytical Engine was made but his sponsors refused to support his newly made machine because the first one was not yet finished. But then he found a new sponsor abroad to support his new project.

In 1840, Charles Babbage gave a seminar at the University of Turin about his Analytical Engine. A young Italian Engineer, Luigi Menabira, and the future Prime Minister of Italy, wrote up Babbage's lecture in French and it was published in the Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve in October 1842. Ada Lovelace commissioned to translate Menbreas paper into English. She then made one the paper with notes. These notes, which are more extensive than Menabrea's paper, were then published in Taylor's Scientific Memoirs under the initialism AAL (Augusta Ada Lovelace). She labeled the notes from A to G. She describes the note G an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Benoulli Numbers and finally constructed in 1985-2002 and it worked. Ada Lovelace considered as the first published algorithm produced for implementation on a computer. And she was presented as the First Computer Programmer in the world for this reason. Ada called herself an Analysts and Metaphysician.

In 1844, Lovelace also went on to review a research publication on Animal Magnetism, written by Baron Karl von Reichenbach, but her work was never published.

Major Works

Ada Lovelace was a brilliant mathematician, known mainly for the assistance she provided to Charles Babbage on his 'Differential Engine' and 'Analytical Engine'. She wrote the world’s earliest algorithm for the 'Analytical Engine', which allowed the machine to calculate 'Bernoulli numbers'.

Personal Life and Legacy


In spite of her Intelligence, there are people who contested about her ability and capabilities. Like Bruce Collier who wrote a Biography of Babbage in his 1970 Harvard University PhD thesis that Lovelace "made a considerable contribution to publicizing the Analytical Engine, but there is no evidence that she advanced the design or theory of it in any way". And Eugine Eric Kim and Betty Alexandra Toole considered it "incorrect" to regard Ada Lovelace as the first computer programmer. But then Ada Lovelace contribution to the field of computer science with the Analytical Engine is now an incredible and explicit work of her. From 1832, when she was seventeen, her mathematical abilities began to emerge and her interests in mathematics became the majority of her adult life and lead her to become an orphan of mathematical investigator, perhaps of first rate eminence.

On July 8, 1835, aged just 19, Ada married William King. Ada took the title of Countess Lovelace. Like her parents, Ada and William married for love. But Ada had an affair with a tutor and her mother had covered up the scandal. Despite of what she did to his husband, King forgave his wife. William became a supportive husband on his wife's academic endeavors, shared a love. Over the next four years, they had three children together. Their first child Byron, was born on May 1836, Anne Isabella was born on September 1837, and Ralph Gordon born on July 1839. After the birth of Ada's second child, Anne Isabelle also called Anabelle like her grandmother, Ada suffered from cholera in 1837. She had problems with asthma and digestive system. She was given a laudanum and opium by her doctor as a painkiller. Her personality began to change. She experienced mood swings and hallucinations. Despite of her illness, she then pursues her education. William King was made 1st Earl of Lovelace 1838, and Ada became the Right Honourable the Countess of Lovelace. In returned she signed herself Augusta Ada Lovelace, or AAL, and we know her today simply as Ada Lovelace.

November 27, 1852, at the age of 36, Lovelace died the same age as her father had died. She died from uterine cancer and was buried, at her request, next to her father at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.

Ada's children inherited all her restless spirit and had unusual lives. Her oldest son Byron heir to the Lovelace earldom, ran away after her mother's death and she was just 16 that time.10 years later, after working as ship's carpenter, he was found out dead because of tuberculosis. Her second son Ralph was a mountain climber and Iceland explorer. And her only daughter Anne Isabella grew up demure and sheltered as a Victorian lady should but she married a poet and set off on a life of adventure. She was the first western woman to cross the Arabian Desert, and became a legendary breeder of horses. The stallions she brought back with her are the ancestors of 95% of Arabians in Europe today. A memoir by her sister-in law-has an amazing description of her as a "remarkable long-distance runner" whose proudest achievement was sticking on a famous bucking horse. Anne definitely needs her own comic book.

Throughout her life, Ada continued to work on other project after her work with Charles Babbage. In 1844, Ada began to expand her admiration with mathematical model a calculus of the nervous system and she commented this to her friend Woronzow Greig. She never achieved this but because of her desire with her interests she visited the Electrical Engineer Andrew Crosse for her to learn how to carry out electrical experiments. In the same year, she wrote a review of a paper by Baron Karl von Reichenbach, Researches on Magnetism, but it was not published and does not have a progressed the first draft. In 1851, the year before her cancer strikes her, she wrote to her mother mentioning "certain productions" she was working on regarding the relation of math and music.