Wonder Women: Ada Lovelace

Girls can code! In fact, the very first programmer was none other than today's Wonder Women feature, Ada, Countess of Lovelace.

Born in 1815 as the daughter of great British poet, Lord Byron, Lovelace's mother was adamant about Ada's schooling in mathematics and science to counteract the flamboyant reputation of her father's. Often bed-ridden throughout various childhood malaises, Lovelace was first inspired to put her theoretical skills into practice through attempting to fly. She wrote a book about her findings and illustrations having researched construction of wings and flight paths entitled Flyology.

Lovelace began working closely with Charles Babbage as a teenager. Babbage developed the Analytical Engine, a machine that used punch cards and pegs to program arithmetic functions. This would become the basis of all modern computers. Lovelace transcribed Babbage's lectures on the primitive computer's usage and added extensive notes and instructions of her own. She created a calculation for Bernoulli numbers which became the first algorithm to be processed by a computer. Now, THIS is what a computer scientist looks like!