Few people seem to be aware that we celebrated Ada Lovelace Day on Tuesday October 10, 2023. This week was filled with news, most of it bad news, about war, invasions, and Congressional squabbling. Somehow Ada got lost, and yet many thoughtful people acknowledged that the major scientific development of 2023 has been the establishment of AI or Artificial Intelligence. And Ada Lovelace’s life and work did much to make AI possible. She deserves some attention, even during this busy month.

 Who was Ada Lovelace and why is she celebrated? You can still get a few arguments about whether she deserves the distinction, but she certainly had an unusual life. She was born in England in 1815 and was the legitimate daughter of the famous poet, Lord Byron, quite a feat in itself because Byron fathered all of his other children with women who were not his wife. Still, being born legitimate is not an achievement for the baby, who has no choice in the matter. Ada Lovelace (born Augusta Ada Byron) had to be an unusual woman to earn a reputation of her own and gain lasting fame. And she was.

Despite having an irregular upbringing with a mother so focused on hatred for her husband, Byron, that she had little time for her daughter, Ada Lovelace had a good education. Her mother encouraged tutors to teach Ada mathematics as a way to ward off the tendency toward madness that she believed affected Lord Byron and his family. Ada took to numbers and became a competent mathematician as well as mastering several languages. 

Ada Lovelace moved in high social circles. She became Baroness King when she married William King. The couple had three children, but Ada still had time to continue her friendships with both men and women, including the mathematician Charles Babbage.

Charles Babbage was the inventor of the Analytical Engine, a first attempt at a computer, which enabled him and Ada to develop an algorithm that allowed the analytical engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It was this which led to Ada being considered the first computer programmer.

Ada became an avid gambler and tried to find mathematical models to help herself and her friends find a formula to increase their winnings. That, unfortunately, did not work and Ada went deeply into debt. Despite her weaknesses and failures, Ada still deserves some attention as one of the early leaders in science, so let’s offer three cheers for Ada and celebrate her special day as we learn mor about how AI will affect our lives this year and in years to come.