The 19th century mathematician and computer programming pioneer Ada Lovelace is celebrated every year at the start of October on Ada Lovelace Day.

The day was established to celebrate the life and significance of Lovelace, who is described as the ‘first computer programmer’ for her notes on the Analytical Engine, and to use her life and achievements to inspire more women to pursue scientific careers.

Here is all you need to know about Ada Lovelace Day including when is it, what is it and who was the 19th century mathematician.

The 19th century mathematician and computer programming pioneer Ada Lovelace is celebrated every year at the start of October on Ada Lovelace Day

When is Ada Lovelace Day?

Ada Lovelace Day 2018 is on Tuesday, October 9.

What is it?

Founded in 2009 by technologist and journalist Suw Charman-Anderson, Ada Lovelace Day is held every year on the second Tuesday of October and is ‘an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).’

Its mission is to increase the presence and roles of women in STEM, thus creating new role models to encourage the next generation of girls to pursue STEM careers and support women who already work in STEM.

Along with a flagship Ada Lovelace Day Live! session in London, there are many grassroot events happening around the world ranging from conferences to pub quizzes.

Today for #AdaLovelaceDay, a day to celebrate women in #STEM and their contributions, we would like to acknowledge the amazing women who worked at Bletchley Park during WW2 - making up over 3/4 of the workforce.



Pictures from Hut 11A: The Bombe Breakthrough pic.twitter.com/AeN25Lfnn3 — Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) October 9, 2018

Who was Ada Lovelace?

Ada Lovelace was born Augusta Ada Byron on December 10, 1815, the daughter of the erratic, romantic poet Lord Byron and his wife, Annabella Milbanke.

Born into an aristocratic family, albeit a broken one following Byron’s abandonment of Milbanke, Lovelace grew up surrounded by a host of governesses and tutors.

Her mother reportedly was worried that Ada would inherit her father’s madness and tried to instill some sort of mental discipline in the form of a scientific and classical education.

Today is #AdaLovelaceDay! Lovelace was a pioneering mathematician who saw the potential of Babbage's Analytical Engine. She wrote a detailed paper on its significance including the world’s first published computer program or algorithm. pic.twitter.com/qoPuB1LUpY — Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) October 9, 2018

Lovelace proved to be a precocious child with a fierce intellect, inheriting her mother’s mathematical faculties (Lord Byron referred to Milbanke as the Princess of Parallelograms), as well as a shade of her father’s mania.

At the age of 12, Lovelace was fascinated by flying and announced that she would write a book called ‘Flyology’, which would explore the art of flying.

Her intelligence was recognised and cultivated by some of the brightest minds of her generation including Mary Somerville, Michael Faraday and, most famously, Charles Babbage.

Babbage, in a parallel to her mother, referred to Lovelace as the Enchanted Maths Fairy, while another tutor, the eminent mathematician Augustus de Morgan said Lovelace had the potential to become ‘an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence’.

At the age of 19, Lovelace married the aristocrat William King, who would later become the Earl of Lovelace.

Ada wrote what is considered to be the first ever algorithm when working with Charles Babbage on a new machine called the Analytical Engine. The algorithm used the engine to calculate a sequence of numbers. #AdaLovelaceDay #ALD18 pic.twitter.com/2eAymnOQmV — Code Club (@CodeClubWorld) October 9, 2018

Two years prior, Lovelace was first introduced to Babbage, who was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and famous at the time for his huge, unfinished, calculating machines.

It was her interaction with Babbage that put her on the path to posthumous recognition.

In 1842, Lovelace was asked to translate a short Italian article about Babbage’s Analytical Engine designs, which would have functioned as a general-purpose computer.

Along with translating the original paper, Lovelace added her own notes, the pages of which ended up outnumbering the Italian paper itself. Some 44 of the 61 pages comprised Lovelace appendices. It is the last of Lovelace’s notes, Note G, which is most famous.

In it, she describes the potential applications of the computer including translations of music, text and images into computer-language form.

Today is the 10th #AdaLovelaceDay, our annual celebration of women in STEM. Find out more at https://t.co/rXeM370EUO and check out independent ALD events at https://t.co/GCgOyNqkAM — FindingAda (@FindingAda) October 9, 2018

She was the first to realise that if such a computer could process numbers, it could also therefore process symbols and thus produce music and graphics.

In her notes, she published a series of instructions for the Analytical Engine, which would be able to calculate Bernouilli’s Numbers.

The significance of what Lovelace was attempting was only recognised a century later by the codebreaker and mathematician, Alan Turing, thus earning Lovelace the nickname ‘the first computer programmer’.

Lovelace died at the age of 36 from cancer in 1852, just a few years after ‘Sketch of the Analytical Engine, with Notes from the Translator’ was published.