- Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation.
- Lord Byron expected his child to be a “glorious boy” and was disappointed when Lady Byron gave birth to a girl.
- On 16 January 1816, at Lord Byron’s command, Lady Byron left for her parents’ home at Kirkby Mallory, taking their five-week-old daughter with her.
- On 21 April, Lord Byron signed the deed of separation, although very reluctantly, and left England for good a few days later.
- In June 1829, she was paralyzed after a bout of measles. She was subjected to continuous bed rest for nearly a year, something which may have extended her period of disability.
- By 1831, she [Ada Lovelace] was able to walk with crutches. Despite the illnesses, she developed her mathematical and technological skills.
- From 1832, when she was seventeen, her mathematical abilities began to emerge, and her interest in mathematics dominated the majority of her adult life.
- Ada Byron had an affair with a tutor in early 1833. She tried to elope with him after she was caught, but the tutor’s relatives recognised her and contacted her mother. Lady Byron and her friends covered the incident up to prevent a public scandal.
- She was in particular interested in Babbage’s work on the Analytical Engine. Lovelace first met him on 5 June 1833, when she and her mother attended one of Charles Babbage’s Saturday night soirées with their mutual friend, and Ada’s private tutor, Mary Somerville.
- Later that month [June 1833], Babbage invited Lovelace to see the prototype for his difference engine.
- On 8 July 1835, she married William, 8th Baron King, becoming Lady King.
- Lovelace was not shown the family portrait of her father [Lord Byron] until her 20th birthday.
- During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Lovelace translated the Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea’s article on Babbage’s newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine.
- In 1844, she commented to a friend Woronzow Greig about her desire to create a mathematical model for how the brain gives rise to thoughts and nerves to feelings (“a calculus of the nervous system”). She never achieved this, however.
- On 12 August 1851, when she was dying of cancer, Lovelace wrote to him asking him to be her executor, though this letter did not give him the necessary legal authority.
- She lost contact with her husband after confessing something to him on 30 August which caused him to abandon her bedside. It is not known what she told him.
- Lovelace died at the age of 36 on 27 November 1852, from uterine cancer.