Ada Lovelace: Mathematician and Computer Pioneer - Research Paper Example

Ada Lovelace Mathematician, computer pioneer This paper considers the life and works of Ada Lovelace, mathematician and computing Pioneer. It considers her contribution to knowledge, but also why she has not received the distinction and credit she might have done. Introduction Augusta Ada Lovelace is not a name with which most people are familiar. Even fewer could tell you much about her, although most know of her father Lord Byron and her colleague and friend Charles Babbage. Chambers Biographical Dictionary ( page 920) does however give her a paragraph. In more recent times she was honored by the naming of the high –level computer language ADA as her memorial by the United States Defence Department. (Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women, 2000, page 213.) . Also there is now an Ada Lovelace Day, an international day when thousands of internet blogs are dedicated to the achievements and success of women in science. Biography Described in her internet biography as an analyst, metaphysician and the founder of computing Ada was born in 1815 to Isabelle Milbanke and Lord Byron during their short marriage. Even before the wedding Byron said ‘We are two parallel lines that extend infinitely side by side but never intersect, ‘ as quoted in the Mexican article by Lara ‘Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace.’ Isabelle left her husband when her daughter was only a month old. He left England for ever soon afterwards. Isabelle was herself a mathematician once described as ‘the princess of parallelograms’ according to Mary Bellis in her About .com article ‘Who Is Ada? ‘ She wanted Ada to be as unlike her father as possible and so ensured that she received a mathematical and musical education rather than a literary one, according to her biography on the web page Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace. This was meant to be a ‘means of moral discipline and emotional control’ according to Lara quoting Elwin 1975. Towards the end of her life she wrote to her mother, “If you cant give me poetry, cant you give me "poetical science?" as quoted by Dr Betty Toole in her article. ‘Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace.’ The point was that Ada saw mathematics as a series of metaphors and relied on imagination as well as logic. At only 13 years old she designed a flying machine with wings as being powered by a steam engine as described by Lara. Not long before Ada’s birth Sir George Cayley had produced several papers which dealt with the stability ,structure, control and aerodynamics of flying machines, as yet unbuilt. Ada’s design predated Henson’s machine patented in 1843, but intellectual pursuits were not generally considered suitable for society women. From 1832 Mary Somerville became her home tutor. However when she was 17 Ada began a lifelong friendship with Charles Babbage, a Cambridge professor of mathematics. They began a lifelong correspondence. In 1835 Ada married and went on to have three children. Despite this her mother continued to have huge influence until Ada’s early death aged only 36, long before she had really had time to fully explore the possibilities of the machine which she thought “might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.” as quoted on the web page ‘Ada Lovelace Day’. In 1834 Babbage began work on his ‘Analytical Engine’ - a calculating machine. 6 years later In 1842, Louis Menebrea, the Italian mathematician, published in French a memoir which took as its subject the Analytical Engine. Ada acted as Babbage’s translator for this memoir. The extra notes which she added of her own ideas are the reasons she is credited as a great original mathematical thinker. This is not just a few notes. She expanded the work by tripling it according to ‘Ada Lovelace, at a Glance’ Both she and Babbage understood the machine, but it was she who was better able to foresee its future possibilities – even predicting computerized musical notation. Babbage described her as ‘the enchantress of numbers’. Unfortunately the machine never did get built and so Ada was unable to see her calculations used, in part because of her early death. Her importance as an original thinker Richard Hyman , writing in 1996 on ‘The Babbage Pages’ does not give Ada the praise that others do. He places her as only the 5th or 6th person of importance with regard to Babbage’s machine ‘All she did was rework some calculations Babbage had carried out years earlier.’ On the other hand Morrow and Perl claim she was interested not just in mathematics, but in everything that was novel and interesting. ( page 129, 1998) Mary Somerville had written ‘The Mechanisms of the Heavens” in 1831, a work about astronomy. This was the work which spurred the young Ada on because she wanted from that time to be a famous mathematician. Somerville’s notes were even used at Cambridge University, although of course women did not teach there. As Lara points out by quoting Costa in 2000 ( pages 49-60) no women at the time ever had any intention or hope of becoming a professional scientist of any kind. Babbage was heard by Ada at a dinner party to ask ‘What if a calculating engine could not only foresee but could act on that foresight.’ (as quoted by Betty Toole 2010). It was this conjecture and ‘the universality of his ideas’ that first intrigued the young Ada, but few others were interested. Her notes on the machine do show originality in that she appended notes describing such things as notes on how to calculate a series of rational numbers, Bernoulli numbers which have several interesting properties, using the proposed Machine and a series of punch cards, with several hundred lines of code – this could be described as programming and makes her the first person to write such a computer program, in this case not using electronics, but the common materials available to her, which elevates the level of her achievements . She anticipated artificial intelligence – it was she rather than Babbage who foresaw where the machine could take them, including its possible use as a scientific tool and even to produce graphics. However Babbage must also be given credit as at first Ada merely provided him with a straight translation. It was he who encouraged Ada to add her own notes according to Betty Toole. In the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women ( page 211, 2000) the authors feel that Ada’s credits as a programmer have been overstressed, but nevertheless felt that she is important as a role model, but as more is discovered her role in mathematical history increases. The view of her contempories Ada’s occasional tutor Augustus DeMorgan wrote to her mother about her unusual child:- I feel bound to tell you that . . . [Adas] power of thinking on these matters . . . has been something so utterly out of the common way for any beginner, man or woman, (that) . . . had any young beginner, about to go to Cambridge, shown the same power, I should have prophesied [that he would become] . . . an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence. This is quoted by Morrow and Perl and comes from The Lovelace Papers 10th January 1844. Yet that was only one person’s opinion and even he could not see Ada as a possible university student, the first women only being admitted in 1836 and that not to Oxford or Cambridge, who waited until the 20th century before granting degrees to women. When Ada’s work for Babbage was completed she signed it only with her initials and the author’s identity was generally unknown for some time, although Babbage distributed copies widely, acknowledging that she had made things clearer than he ever could. Morrow and Perl ( page 130) point out how, when asked why she hadn’t produced an originals paper on the topic Ada’s response was that she hadn’t considered it – so unusual was it for women of her time to be considered as scientific thinkers. Mathematics was considered to be an ‘unfeminine’ occupation. Lara quotes Costa , 2002, pages 49-60 says Conclusion One of the criteria for this essay was to include a text book reference. This has proved difficult. Arachne Jericho writing as recently as 2010 claims that Lovelace has been written out of scientific textbooks which if they mention any woman at all only include Marie Curie. Ada is to be praised for the way she could see potential. It was she who described Babbage’s machine as ‘a thinking…. and reasoning machine….. a general purpose machine capable of being programmed by the user,” according to Jonathon Taylor in his 2004 article ‘On History, Chaos and Carlyle’. Although most people know of Lord Byron and that he was a poet, few could quote more than a line. Even fewer could quote the work of Richard Lovelace, the English Civil War poet, yet both these men receive wider publicity than Ada Lovelace, despite the fact that so many of us use computers every day. She has been dismissed as everything from a hypochondriac to drug addict and gambler. It is about time this injustice was rectified. Works Cited Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace 1st November 2010 http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html Ada Lovelace, At a glance, The Great Idea Finder, 2nd November 2010, http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/lovelace.htm Ada Lovelace Day 2nd November 2010 http://findingada.com/who-was-ada/ Bellis, M. , Who is Ada? About.com, 2nd November 2010http://inventors.about.com/od/lstartinventors/p/Ada_Lovelace.htm Cramerae, C. and Spender, D. Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women’s Issues and Knowledge, Volume 1, New York and London, Routledge 2000 Elwin, M., Lord Byron’s Family- Annabella, Ada and Augusta; Great Britain: John Murray, 1975 Hyman,R. The Babbage Pages October 1st 1996, 2nd November 2010, http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/babbage/ada.html Jericho, A, Ada Lovelace Day: Dignifying Science 24th March 2010, 2nd November 2010, http://www.spontaneousderivation.com/tags/ada-lovelace/ Lara, B.V.Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, History of Mathematics, 2nd November 2010 http://www.cidse.itcr.ac.cr/revistamate/HistoriaMatematica/HistoriaV8n2-007/Augusta_%20Ada_%20King.htm Lovelace Papers 67, folder 127, 10th January 1844, Bodleian Library, Oxford University. Magnusson, M. editor, Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Edinburgh, Chambers, 1990 Morrow, C. and Perl,T, ( editors ) Notable Women in Mathematics, Westport, CT, 1998 Greenwood Press . Taylor, J., On History, Chaos and Carlyle, CLIO, Volume 33, 2004 Toole, B. Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, July 2010, 2nd November 2010, http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/WOMEN/love.htm Read More