Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician remembered for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed Analytical Engine. In 1843 she published an English translation of an Italian memoir describing the machine and added a long series of her own Notes that became far more influential than the article they accompanied.
Her Notes, in particular Note G, set out a detailed method for using the engine to compute the Bernoulli numbers, laid out as a sequence of operations. This is widely regarded as the first published algorithm intended for a machine, and it is the reason Lovelace is often described as the first computer programmer. She also grasped, more clearly than her contemporaries, that such an engine could in principle manipulate any symbols according to rules, not just numbers.
Lovelace is equally remembered for a note of caution. In her own words the Analytical Engine “has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.” A century later Alan Turing took up this remark, labelled it “Lady Lovelace’s Objection,” and argued against it, making her one of the earliest voices in the long debate over whether machines can think. The primary source used here is the transcription of her 1843 publication, including her Notes, hosted at fourmilab.ch.