Celebrating women in STEM

Ada Lovelace

The world's first computer programmer

A brief timeline of Ada's life


  1. Augusta Ada Byron is born in London, England.

  2. Ada writes her first book, "Flyology", about the dynamics of flight.

  3. Ada meets Charles Babbage, inventor of the Difference Engine and considered a founding father of the computer.

  4. Ada translates Babbage's lecture about his "Analytical Engine" in English.

  5. Ada finishes translating and annotating the "Analytical Engine". Her notes are sorted from A to G. Note G is the most famous and describes a computer and its software.

  6. Ada Lovelace passes away.

Why is Ada Lovelace credited as the first computer programmer?

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.

Ada Lovelace in pop culture

Doctor Who

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.

Conceiving Ada

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".

Victoria, S2

Lovelace appears as characters in the ITV series Victoria (2017). Emerald Fennell portrays Lovelace in the episode, "The Green-Eyed Monster."

Women in STEM: some statistics

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.

What can we do to remedy this?

Get more women coding!

Sources: STEM Women, Jobs.co.uk.