Augusta Ada Byron, this is her birth name, was born on December 10, 1815, the only legitimate child of the poet Byron. Her parents split shortly after her birth and because of the lack of interest for her by her father it was her mother Anne Isabella who took care of her. The woman had received a high level education in various subjects and, in fear that her daughter would follow in her father’s footsteps, encouraged her to study mathematics.

Ada Byron got soon known in the good English society for her intelligence and in 1833 met for the first time Charles Babbage, one of the fathers of computer science. Since then, she started collaborating with the scientist with interest in his analytical engines. A description of an algorithm to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers was later recognized as the first computer program in history and the reason why Ada is considered the first programmer.

In 1835, Ada married William King, Earl of Lovelace, the reason why she’s especially known as Ada Lovelace. The couple had three children and over the years Ada suffered serious health problems but continued in her studies of mathematics and in her collaboration with Charles Babbage. Over the years she also had a correspondence with other scientists such as Michael Faraday and John Herschel.

Ada Lovelace died at only 36 on November 27, 1852 of uterine cancer. The value of her contribution to information technology has been under discussion for quite some time. In the past, a male chauvinist vision saw her works as elaborations of Charles Babbage’s ideas. However, the Babbage himself at the time already admitted that Ada Lovelace understood the work he was carrying out and helped him.

Reading Ada Lovelace’s notes, you can see that she understood the potential of devices such as the analytical engine beyond the simple number processing. In essence, she already understood the evolution of programmable machines and their possible applications in various fields.

In recent decades the legacy of Ada Lovelace was recognized in various ways. In 1980 the Ada programming language was created. Since 1998 the British Computer Society awards the Lovelace Medal to people who brought progress to information systems. In mid-October the Ada Lovelace Day has been celebrated for some years in order to raise the profile of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. These and other recognition prove that, despite her short life, Ada Lovelace left a lasting legacy.