Free Custom «Ada Lovelace» Essay Paper

Ada Lovelace’s Childhood

Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer born on10 December 1815. She was initially named Augusta Ada Byron. She was the only legitimate child of her parents Lord Byron and Anna Isabella Byron. Her father was not happy when she was born since he was expecting a boy child. Unfortunately, Ada’s parents separated only a month after she was born. Her mother stayed with her and her father left England forever. When Ada was 8 years old, her father died and this made her depressed. Her childhood was full of illnesses. She suffered from severe headaches that influenced her eyesight. In 1829 she was paralysed after she suffered from measles.

Ada Lovelace’s Adult Life

After she had completed her schooling, Ada met a friend known as Mary Somerville. Somerville and Ada became great friends and it is her who introduced Ada to Charles Babbage on 5^th June 1833. In July 1835, Ada got married to William King in Ockham and they had three children. However, Ada’s marriage with her husband was not a happy one since she was involved in many scandals of infidelity.

Ada’s Greatest Achievement

There was an English mathematician known as Babbage. Ada was introduced to Babbage by her friend Mary. During that period, Babbage was working on some computer programme whose notes had been written in Italian. Since they were friends with Babbage, she decided to help him work on analytical engine. According to Toole (1998, p. 25), the engine had notes written in Italian and she translated them between the years 1842 and 1843. The notes had initially been written by an Italian mathematician known as Luigi Menabrea. The notes that she came up with were later considered to be the first computer programme. This was achieved in 1843. The computer programme spread all over the world and earned her a fortune.

Additionally, she explained how computers had the capability to go beyond the normal mathematical calculation, while other people like Babbage did not understand that. Despite the fact that Babbage is normally given the credit for scientific computing, if it were not for Ada he would not have managed to come up with that. After this success, Ada was still interested in mathematics and science and wanted to do more. Toole (2010) claims that in 1844 she had a project that she mentioned to a friend known as Woronzow. Ada was planning to set up a mathematical model of how the human brain gives rise to the thoughts. However, her engagement with many issues did not let her achieve this. Furthermore, in the same year, Ada wrote a paper review about her research on magnetism. At that time much was happening inher life and, as a result, the project did not progress. In 1852, just before cancer struck her, Ada wrote to her mother and told her about the other projects she was working on in the fields of mathematics and music (Weeda 2004).

Ada’s Death

Ada died at a young age of thirty six on 27 November 1852. She died from uterine cancer, a disease that she had never experienced before (Computer History Museum 2008). Ada had been suffering from this disease for several months and her mother took care of her.