Celebrating women in STEM
Ada started studying mathematics very early on, and absolutely
loved it. In 1833, she met the mathematician
Charles Babbage. He had designed a calculating machine called the
Difference Engine, and was working on a more-advanced machine, the
Analytical Engine.
In 1843, Lovelace translated a French paper that
mathematician Luigi Menabrea wrote about the Analytical Engine.She
also added thousands of words of her own notes to the paper,
realizing that the Analytical Engine could carry out an extensive
sequence of mathematical operations.
The example she wrote of one such sequence — how to calculate
Bernoulli numbers — is regarded by computer historians as the
first computer program. Only a small piece of the Analytical
Engine was ever built, but her fame lives on.
Ada gave
her name to the Ada programming language. Every year on the second
Tuesday in October, the contributions of women to science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are celebrated on
Ada Lovelace Day.
Lovelace features as a character in "Spyfall, Part 2", series 12, which first aired on BBC One on 5 January 2020. The character was portrayed by Sylvie Briggs.
In this 1997 movie, a computer scientist obsessed with Ada finds a way of communicating with her in the past by means of "undying information waves".
Lovelace appears as characters in the ITV series Victoria (2017). Emerald Fennell portrays Lovelace in the episode, "The Green-Eyed Monster."
24%
of STEM workforce in the UK
are female or non-binary.
13.6%
of engineers in the UK
are female or non-binary.
19.9%
of IT professionals were women or non-binary
in 2022, a decrease from 21% in 2021.
Get more women coding!