Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)

Ada Lovelace developed an interest in mathematics very young, unlike most young women in the English nobility. After meeting the mathematician Charles Babbage, who was interested in machines capable of making complex calculations quickly, she became fascinated by these machines and envisioned several possible developments. In 1842, she was asked to translate into English a memoir about Babbage’s analytical engine written by the Italian mathematician Federico Luigi. She was invited by Babbage to add her personal notes to this translation, and in doing so, she introduced the concept of a computer program to calculate Bernouilli numbers. Today, this program is considered to be the very first computer program in the world.