Ada Lovelace years of life. Ada Lovelace: biography, personal life, achievements, photos

Ada Lovelace - Countess, only legitimate daughter of the poet George Byron, the first female programmer. WITH early years began to show interest in exact sciences, including mathematics. Ada was the first lady to understand the working principle of Babbage's logarithmic computer. Moreover, I became so fascinated by the idea of ​​its development and improvement that I came up with it myself. various options tasks.

Name of one of the smartest women of her era became known only decades after her death. Until now, she remains in the shadow of her male colleagues. In most specialized textbooks there is not a single word about it. Meanwhile, the contribution of Ada Lovelace, née Byron, to the development of programming can rightfully be considered enormous.
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Find out about several interesting facts from the life of this amazing woman, whose lively mind was ahead of its time, striving for amazing discoveries.

Leonardo da Vinci in a skirt

More than anything else, Ada’s mother was worried that her daughter would inherit her father’s passion for writing and grow up to be just as eccentric and hot-tempered. Therefore, from an early age, she did not welcome the girl’s passion for reading prose and poetry, in every possible way drawing her attention to the exact sciences. In particular, Mrs. Byron invited the mathematician Augustus de Morgan to teach her daughter. As a result, at the age of 13, Ada already had several drawings aircraft.

Fateful meeting

It is known that Ada was familiar with such outstanding personalities of his time as the prose writer Charles Dickens, the experimental physicist Michael Faraday, David Brewster (it was this man who invented the kaleidoscope). However, there was a meeting in her life that largely determined her life path. While still young unmarried girl, she met the famous mathematics professor Charles Babbage. A few years earlier, he invented his logarithmic machine, which had the ability to carry out calculations with an accuracy of up to the twentieth digit. It was this machine that would later be recognized as the first computer in the world.

Family is not a hindrance

At the age of 19, pioneering programmer Ada Lovelace tied the knot with Lord Lovelace. Whether it was love or whether she was guided by precise calculation and pragmatism can only be guessed at. However, it is a fact that this marriage turned out to be very successful for her in all respects. The husband did not particularly interfere with his wife’s hobbies and, on the contrary, helped her financially and did not limit her time.

Even three children of the same age could not extinguish the flame of passion for science that raged inside Ada. Moreover, marriage, which seemed to be destined to consume a woman with worries, she was able to turn to the benefit of the work of her whole life. In it she found an excellent source of funding in the form of the rich family treasury of the Lovelace family.

First software

The basis for calling Ada Lovelace the world's first programmer comes from the work she created, consisting of a translation into English language article describing Babbage's invention.

However, this was not just a translation. She supplemented the text with detailed comments, increasing its volume more than three times. They, in particular, discussed the development of an operational plan for the analytical engine. This was the first programming! Its “operations,” according to the creator herself, endowed the computing machine with the amazing ability to weave algebraic formulas, similar to the Jacquard loom, which creates leaves, flowers, and patterns from yarn.

Ability to predict the future

Nature generously endowed Ada with not only beauty and intelligence, but also insight. Another passion of the Countess was music. One day she boldly suggested that the time would come when a computing machine would become so advanced that it would be able to create amazing pieces of music. Well, today we are able to assess the accuracy of its forecasts.

Let's teach how to weave websites: profession "".

Countess Augusta Ada King (née Byron) is an English mathematician who went down in history by creating a description of the first computer, the design of which was created by Charles Babbage.

Augusta Ada King was born on December 10, 1815. She came from famous family and was the only legitimate daughter of the poet George Gordon Byron. Lord Byron saw his daughter only once, at the age of one month, since in April 1816 he had already officially divorced his wife and left England.

The girl was named Augusta, in honor of one of Byron's relatives. But everyone in the house called her Ada. Apparently, Augusta Ada inherited her love for the exact sciences from her mother, since Anna Isabella Byron was fond of mathematics, for which she received the nickname “queen of parallelograms” from her husband.

It is not known for certain whether the parents were involved in raising the child, nor is it known whether the girl lived with her mother, since from childhood she lived in the house of Anna Isabella Byron's parents. But Mrs Byron accepted active participation in training Ada, because she wanted to find and develop her analytical abilities in her daughter, and not the romantic inclinations of her father.

Scottish mathematician Augustus de Morgan was hired to teach the girl. His wife was Mary Sommerville, translator of the “Treatise on Celestial Mechanics” by the famous astronomer and mathematician P. Laplace. She became a mentor and role model for Ada. It was from her that Ada first heard the name of Charles Babbage.

At the age of thirteen, the girl drew drawings of aircraft in her album. Although there is evidence that Ada wrote poetry, she was incredibly ashamed of it. Ada Byron's second hobby after mathematics was music. She managed to combine her two passions, suggesting that the Analytical Engine would eventually be able to compose music.

At the age of 17, the girl began to go out into society and was introduced to the queen and king. On June 5, 1833, Ada first met Cambridge University mathematics professor Charles Babbage. By this time, the professor had already completed the description of his calculating machine, and he was even paid a subsidy for its construction. But construction was delayed, and funding was stopped.

In 1835, Miss Byron married Baron William King, who later received the title Lord Lovelace. Over time, the family had three children: Byron, Anabella and Ralph. But this did not stop Ada from completely devoting herself to mathematics.

Babbage's machine was not forgotten. In 1842, the Italian scientist Manibera became acquainted with its device. It was he who made the first detailed description of it. But the article was written in French, and Ada Lovelace translated it into English. Lovelace later provided detailed comments to the article. It is because of them that Ada Lovelace is considered the first programmer of our planet.

She was the first to draw up a plan of operations for the Analytical Engine, with which it was possible to solve Bernoulli's equation. True, one of her assumptions almost killed both her and Babbage: Ada decided that the machine could predict the results of races, and trying to prove this assumption, she lost her money and her husband’s money.

Many contemporaries believed that Ada was in cahoots with the devil. The London nobility was frightened not by the fact that Satan allegedly revealed some secret to her, but by the pressure with which she defended her “guru” husband and demanded money for his invention. And she herself said more than once that she works like the devil.

This woman introduced such concepts and terms as “work cell” and “cycle”. Together with Babbage, they outlined such concepts as subroutine, instruction modification, library and index register. In 1843 her first works were published. But in those days it was considered indecent for a woman to publish her works under full name. That's why for a long time many works of women mathematicians (and not only mathematicians) were little known.

Ada's death from cancer saved the Lovelace family from ruin. She died on November 27, 1825, at the age of 36, and was buried in the Byron family crypt, next to her father, whom she had never known in her life. Charles Babbage survived her by 20 years; his machine was never completed. And only in 1991, British scientists continued the work. Finally, the computer was created.

In 1975, the US Department of Defense decided to develop a universal programming language. This project was called “Ada”.

December 10 is named Programmer's Day in honor of the first representative of this not too ancient profession, who was also born on this day.

Augusta Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815. She was the only daughter of the great English poet George Gordon Byron (1788 - 1824) and Annabella Byron, née Milbank (1792 - 1860). “She is an extraordinary woman, a poet, a mathematician, a philosopher,” Byron wrote about his future wife in 1813. Her parents separated when the girl was two months old, and she never saw her father again.

Ada inherited her mother’s love of mathematics and many of her father’s traits, including a similar emotional character.
Byron dedicated several touching lines to his daughter in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, but at the same time, in a letter to his cousin, he was worried in advance: “I hope that God will reward her with anything, but not a poetic gift...
Ada had an excellent upbringing. The study of mathematics occupied an important place in him, to a large extent under the influence of his mother. Her teacher was the famous English mathematician and logician Augustus de Morgan. Her first acquaintance with the outstanding mathematician and inventor Charles Babage, the creator of the first program-controlled digital computer, which he called “analytical,” dates back to 1834. Babbage, who knew Lady Byron, encouraged young Ada's passion for mathematics. Babbage constantly monitored Ada's scientific pursuits; he selected and sent her articles and books, primarily on mathematical issues. Ada's activities were encouraged by her family's friends - Augustus de Morgan and his wife, the Sommervilles and others. Ada attends D. Lardner's public lectures on the machine. Together with Sommerville and others, she visits Babbage for the first time and inspects his workshop. After her first visit, Ada began to visit Babbage often, sometimes accompanied by Mrs. de Morgan. In her memoirs, de Morgan described one of her first visits as follows: “While some of the guests looked in amazement at this amazing device with such a feeling, as they say, savages see a mirror for the first time or hear a shot from a gun, Miss Byron, still very young, was able to understand machine performance and assessed great dignity inventions"

Augusta Ada's family life was happy. In 1835, Ada Byron, aged nineteen, married 29-year-old Lord King, who later became Earl of Lovelace. The husband had nothing against his wife’s scientific pursuits and even encouraged her in them. True, valuing her highly mental abilities, he lamented: “What a great general you could have become!” The Lovelaces led a social lifestyle, regularly hosting receptions and evenings at their London home and country estate of Oakhut Park. Ada's marriage did not alienate her from Babbage; their relationship became even more cordial. At the beginning of their acquaintance, Babbage was attracted by the girl’s mathematical abilities. Subsequently, Babbage found in her a person who supported all his bold undertakings. Ada was almost the same age as his daughter who died early. All this led to a warm and sincere attitude towards Ada for many years.

Ada was short, and Babbage, when mentioning her, often called her a fairy. The editor of Examiner magazine once described her as follows: “She was amazing, and her genius (and she had genius) was not poetic, but mathematical and metaphysical, her mind was in constant movement, which connected with great demands. Along with such masculine qualities as firmness and determination, Lady Lovelace was characterized by delicacy and refinement of the most refined nature. Her manners, tastes, education... were feminine in in a good way of this word, and the superficial observer could never have guessed the power and knowledge that lay hidden beneath the feminine attractiveness. As much as she disliked frivolity and banality, she loved to enjoy real intellectual society.

The Lovelace couple had a son in 1836, a daughter in 1838 and a son in 1839. Naturally, this took Ada away from mathematics for a while. But soon after the birth of her third child, she turns to Babbage with a request to find her a mathematics teacher. At the same time, she writes that she has the strength to go as far in achieving her goals as she wishes. Babbage, in a letter dated November 29, 1839, responds to Lovelace: “I think that your mathematical abilities are so obvious that they do not need testing. I made inquiries, but at present I have not been able to find a person whom I could recommend to you as a teacher. I will continue searching"

From the beginning of 1841, Lovelace began seriously studying Babbage's machines. In one of her letters to Babbage, Ada writes: “You must tell me basic information regarding your machine. I have good reason for wanting this." In a letter dated January 12, 1841, she outlines her plans: “...For some time in the future (maybe within 3 or 4, or perhaps even many years) my head may serve you for your purposes and plans... Exactly I want to have a serious conversation with you on this issue." This offer was gratefully accepted by Babbage. Since that time, their cooperation has not been interrupted and has produced brilliant results.

In October 1842, Menabrea's article was published, and Ada began translating it. They developed the plan and structure of the notes together. Having finished each note, Ada sent it to Babbage, who edited it, made various comments and sent it on. The work was transferred to the printing house on July 6, 1843.
The central point of Lovelace's work was the compilation of a program (numbers) for calculating Bernoulli numbers. Lovelace's comments included three of the world's first computer programs that she compiled for Babbage's machine. The simplest of them and the most detailed is the program for solving a system of two linear algebraic equations with two unknowns. When analyzing this program, the concept of work cells (work variables) was first introduced and the idea of ​​sequentially changing their content was used. From this idea there is one step left to the assignment operator - one of the fundamental operations of all programming languages, including machine ones. A second program was written to calculate the values trigonometric function with repeated repetition of a given sequence of computational operations; For this procedure, Lovelace introduced the concept of a loop, one of the fundamental constructs of structured programming. The third program, designed to calculate Bernoulli numbers, already used recurrent nested loops. In her comments, Lovelace also expressed an excellent guess that computational operations could be performed not only with numbers, but also with other objects, without which computers would remain just powerful, high-speed calculators.

Since 1844, Ada Lovelace became more and more interested in racing, especially since she herself rode well and loved horses. Both Babbage and William Lovelace played at the races, and Babbage, who was interested in applied questions of probability theory, looked at the game at the races from these positions and looked for the optimal gaming system. However, both Babbage and Ada's husband relatively soon abandoned participation in the game. But Ada, passionate and stubborn, continued to play. Moreover, Lady Ada became close to a certain John Cross, who blackmailed her. She spent almost all her funds and by 1848 had incurred large debts. Then her mother had to pay off these debts, and at the same time buy the incriminating letters from John Cross. In the early 50s, the first signs of the disease that claimed the life of Ada Lovelace appeared. In November 1850 he wrote to Babbage: “My health... is so bad that I want to accept your offer and appear to your medical friends upon arrival in London.” Despite the measures taken, the disease progressed and was accompanied by severe suffering. On November 27, 1852, Ada Lovelace died before reaching 37 years of age. Along with her outstanding intellect, her father also passed on this terrible heredity to her - early death- the poet died at the same age... She was buried next to her father in the Byron family crypt.

Success came to her with great stress and not without damage to her health. We managed to do little on our own short life Augusta Ada Lovelace. But the little that came from her pen wrote her name in history computational mathematics and computer technology as the first programmer. The ADA language, developed in 1980, is one of the universal programming languages, named in memory of Ada Lovelace. This language was widely used in the United States, and the US Department of Defense even approved the name “Ada” as the name of a unified programming language for the American military, and later for the entire NATO.
Two small cities in America are also named after Ada Lovelace - in the states of Alabama and Oklahoma. There is also a college named after her in Oklahoma.

Augusta Ada Byron-King, whose birthday is 201 on December 10, went down in history not only as the daughter of the poet Lord Byron, but also as the first computer programmer. The mathematician Countess described a computer and wrote the first program at a time when computers did not yet exist.

A. E. Shalon. Watercolor portrait of Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. Fragment

The programming language Ada is named after her, and the terminology introduced by Lady Byron is still used today. The Countess was so smart and attractive that her contemporaries accused her of having connections with the devil, but she did not deny this.

Ada Byron as a child

Ada's father Lord Byron

The famous father saw his daughter only once, at the age of one month. She was born in December 1815, and in April 1816 George Gordon Byron divorced his wife and left England. The girl was named Augusta in honor of Byron's sister, but after the divorce in her mother's house no one spoke this name, everyone called her Ada. And all her father’s books were removed from the family library.

Ada's mother Annabella Milbank

Ada's parents: George Gordon Byron and Annabella Milbank

The girl inherited her love for exact sciences from her mother, Annabella Milbank-Byron, who was called the “queen of parallelograms.” Noticing her daughter's abilities, the mother invited her friend to work with her. former teacher, Scottish mathematician A. de Morgan, and his wife M. Somerville. At the age of 13, Ada was already drawing drawings of aircraft in her album.

A. de Morgan and M. Somerville

From her mentor, Ada first heard the name of Charles Babbage, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, and soon met him personally. At that time, he was developing a design for a calculating machine that could perform calculations with an accuracy of up to the twentieth digit. The project was never implemented, but Ada took part in the development. While translating the work of the Italian scientist L. Menebrea, she provided the text with such detailed comments and observations that she surpassed the author himself.

Charles Babbage and his difference engine

She managed to discern in the machine being described something that even the inventor did not suspect: “The essence and purpose of the machine will change depending on what information we put into it. The machine will be able to write music, draw pictures and show science ways that we have never seen anywhere.” Ada foresaw the possibilities of the computer even before it was created. She described an algorithm for calculating Bernoulli numbers on the Analytical Engine. It was the first program written for a computer, and although Babbage's machine was never built during his lifetime, Ada is considered the first programmer.

Augusta Ada Byron at age 17

In secular society, Countess Lovelace made a splash. She had not only a remarkable mind, but also stunning beauty. Because of this, contemporaries suspected her of conspiring with the devil. Ada not only did not deny these rumors, but also added fuel to the fire with her statements. So, in a letter to Babbage, she declared, not without coquetry: “I am a devil or an angel. I work like the devil for you, Charles Babbage; I’m sifting through Bernoulli’s numbers for you.” And another time she self-confidently asserted: “I swear to the devil, not even ten years will pass and I will suck enough life juice from the secrets of the universe. In a way that ordinary mortal minds and lips cannot do. No one knows what monstrous power lies still untapped in my little flexible creature.”

Margaret Sarah Carpenter. Portrait of Ada Lovelace, 1836

Ada did not give up her studies even after marriage and the birth of three children. Her husband was Baron King, who soon inherited the title of Lord Lovelace. He did not interfere with his wife’s hobbies and provided her with significant financial support. She herself tried to earn money, and very in an unusual way. Together with Babbage, they began to develop a win-win betting system on horse races - Countess Lovelace was a gambler. Having lost an impressive amount, she did not stop and continued to play. Secretly from her loved ones, Ada spent all her personal money on the races. Once she even became a victim of blackmailers who threatened to reveal her secret.

Unknown artist. Portrait of Ada Lovelace, c. 1840

Ada Lovelace

They say that only the sudden death of Ada saved the Lovelace family from complete ruin. The Countess died in 1852 from cancer, a few days short of turning 37, just like her father. She was buried in the Byron family crypt, next to her father, whom she had never seen. The ideas of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage were developed only a century later: in 1991, a mechanical computing machine was built based on Babbage’s drawings, and although its speed was incomparable with modern computers, it was this machine that gave impetus to their creation.

A computer created according to Babbage's drawings