Spotlighting a Woman in the STEM Field
By Beth He
Today, in the modern era, nearly everything we complete is on a computer of some sort. Whether it’s sending emails, completing assignments, or consuming media, it is hard to imagine a life without computers now. Even though this technological innovation seems complex and highly advanced, its history dates back to the 1800s. It was a woman named Ada Lovelace who made significant contributions and advancements to the first computer. At a time when women were expected to solely fill their societal roles, Ada Lovelace broke gender barriers and changed the world for the better.
Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815, in Piccadily Terrace, Middlesex (now present-day London). Her childhood was tumultuous, with her parents’ divorce, her father’s death later on, and many illnesses. Despite this, Lovelace was a very curious and educated child. Her family was wealthy which enabled her to learn from private tutors in mathematics and science, greatly helping her career later on.
On June 5, 1833, early in Lovelace’s computer programming career, she met Charles Babbage. This would turn out to be a pivotal moment for her. Babbage was a mathematician and inventor and was working on his Difference Engine, which was essentially a calculator. Lovelace was immediately interested, looked at the model, and also studied the blueprints. She also wrote detailed notes on Babbage’s later invention, the Analytical Engine (simply, a more advanced Difference Engine). A section of these notes, called Note G, is considered to be the first computer program. This first program is an algorithm Lovelace created to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, a sequence of rational numbers which occur frequently in analysis, on the Analytical Engine. Finally, her ideas about computers, digitizing daily life, and even a looping method now used in modern computer programming were very futuristic. Despite all of this, she was still underestimated by many, even Charles Babbage himself. He often rejected Lovelace’s work and could not see her as anything more than an assistant. In the words of James Essinger who wrote a biography about her, “[Lovelace] had seen the computer age clearly ahead. She was just never allowed to act on what she saw” (Essinger 233).
Unfortunately, Ada Lovelace died at the young age of 36 in 1852 due to uterine cancer. She only earned the recognition she deserved after her death, when her notes were discovered in the 1950s. In a time where STEM subjects were male-dominanted fields, Ada Lovelace was still able to help launch the digital and computer age with her advanced ideas. If Lovelace were to have more time and face less gender inequities, then perhaps society as a whole could have been advanced and digitized much earlier.
Works Cited
"Ada Lovelace: Founder of Scientific Computing." San Diego Supercomputer Center, www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html. Accessed 11 Jan. 2021.
“Ada Lovelace.” Famous Scientists, 19 Jan. 2015, www.famousscientists.org/ada-lovelace/#:~:text=Lived%201815%20%E2%80%93%201852.,much%20more%20than%20just%20calculations.
Essinger, James. Ada's Algorithm: How Lord Byron's Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age. Melville House, 2014.
Haertsch, Emilie. "Labor of Lovelace: A Children’s Introduction to a Programming Giant." Science History Institute, 10 June 2019, www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/labor-of-lovelace-a-childrens-introduction-to-a-programming-giant#:~:text=Lovelace%20faced%20many%20difficulties%20to,largely%20take%20the%20initiative%20herself.
