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STEM Heroines: Math role models for girls

Here's our list of female mathematicians through history who broke down barriers in their own lives to learn and live as experts in their field.  

7. Augusta Ada Byron (also known as Ada Lovelace) (1815 – 1852)

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Students study math during a 'Bridges to College' class at Jewish Vocational Service in Boston that will eventually help them find employment after they graduate, on February 11.

  • By Staff Correspondent

Augusta Ada Byron (later known as the Countess of Lovelace) was the daughter of poet Lord Byron. Her mother, “wanting to daughter to grow up as unemotional – and unlike her father – as possible, encouraged her study of science and mathematics,” according to the Smithsonian.

Ms. Byron was a long-time friend to Charles Babbage, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, who was known as the inventor of the Difference Engine, an elaborate calculating machine that operated by the method of finite differences. Byron suggested that Mr. Babbage write a plan for how the engine might calculate Bernoulli numbers, the sequence of rational numbers that are most closely studied in basic arithmetic. This plan, is now regarded as the first "computer program." A software language developed by the US Department of Defense was named "Ada" in her honor in 1979. 

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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