Ada Lovelace

Lovely small exhibition at the Science Museum looking at the life and work of Ada Lovelace, daughter of Byron and pioneer of computing.

The room was dominated by a wonderful portrait of her by Margaret Carpenter, appropriate that a woman who is now seen as an icon for women scientists was painted by another woman. It’s a lovely image of an attractive fashionable young woman.

There were interesting cases on her early life when her mother, who had separated from Byron when Ada was 7 months old, had introduced her to engineers, scientists and medics. Her tutor was a mathematician.

In 1842 Ada translated an article by Babbage, the computer pioneer, into English adding her own notes section to it as a commentary. It was the first article to articulate the significance of an analytical engine to use numbers to abstract their use. It was lovely that a model of Babbage’s machine was to one side of the portrait.

There were lots of letters by and to Ada and I loved a description of her by Faraday in assuring colleagues that she had written the notes not him in which he called her a “youthful fairy”!

Closes on 31 March 2016.

Review
Evening Standard

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