The First Computer Programmer in History is… Ada Lovelace King (1815-1852)
Ada King, Countess of Lovelace born Ada Byron, is an English mathematician and writer. The story of this woman, who lived only 36 years, is emblematic for our blog!
Ada Lovelace King is the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron, but everyone ignores that her mother Lady Byron is a mathematician. She is their only child, and should it be said that “at her birth, her father, who dreamed of a ‘glorious boy’, was very disappointed to have a daughter? He would separate from his wife a month after Ada’s birth and leave England forever. Although English law at the” time granted full custody of children to the father in case of separation, Lord Byron did not seek to claim his parental rights. Ada had no relationship with her father. He died when she was eight years old.
From a very young age, Ada received private training in mathematics and science from the greatest minds, including Mary Somerville, a famous 19th-century researcher and scientific author. And very early on, Ada felt like an explorer: At twelve, she decided to fly! She adopted a true scientific approach to achieve this: She began by making wings and methodically studied different materials: paper, oil, threads, and feathers. She also examined the “anatomy of birds to determine the right proportion between wings and body. She wrote a book, Flyology, illustrating some of her discoveries with drawings. She then designed the instrumentation and e” quipment and chose, for example, a compass, to “traverse the country by the most direct route”. Her final step was to incorporate steam into “the art of flying”.
At 18, she begins a lifelong working relationship and friendship with British mathematician Charles Babbage, known as “the father of computers”. Their friendship is immortalized as they have been on all British passports since 2015
Babbage is considered the father of computing: he invented the analytical engine, a versatile mechanical calculator incorporating an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and an integrated memory!
Ada is the first to recognize that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and to publish the first algorithm intended to be executed by such a machine. Indeed, at 27, she translates an Italian article (by Luigi Menabrea) on the analytical engine and adds what she modestly calls “Notes”, which are elaborate comments, 3 times longer than the article itself, containing notably this algorithm intended to be executed by the machine and which the history of computer science remembers as the first program. It’s an algorithm to calculate Bernoulli numbers.
Finally, did you know that Ada Lovelace Day is an annual event celebrated on the second Tuesday of October (since 2009)? The objective of this day is to raise the profile of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and to create new role models for girls and women in these fields.
Apart from Ada Lovelace who really impacted the field of computer science and therefore artificial intelligence during the 19th century, other women of the 21st century continue to stand out. Françoise BOUGHER is notably one of them.
Françoise BROUGHER: “For me, if someone is sexist, it’s not my problem, it’s theirs.”
She is one of the few women to have reached the top of Silicon Valley! For 25 years, Françoise Brougher has built a career in tech and digital: with her successes in the upper echelons of Google and Square, Françoise Brougher thought she had broken through the glass ceiling of a long-misogynistic Silicon Valley… but her next experience, as number 2 at Pinterest, would teach her that the battle is not over yet: it’s up to all of us to learn from this!
Let’s revisit her incredible rise. Born in Marseille, the daughter of a journalist and a mathematics teacher, Françoise is interested in science fiction, gadgets (the first Sony Walkman, which will make those over 40 nostalgic!), math, and physics. Her parents were very open-minded: “From the beginning, they told me to do what I wanted.” Françoise naturally studied engineering and graduated from ICAM in Lille in 1989. She then completed her education with an MBA from the prestigious Harvard University. She stayed in Silicon Valley… to pay off her MBA loan. She then tried her hand at startups before joining Charles Schwab, a brokerage firm, at the beginning of online trading. From 2005, she worked alongside the founders of a “small company” of 2000 people: Google. After 2013, she became an executive at Square in a company predominantly led by women.
She attempts to awaken the company with transparency and confrontation. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. She is marginalized and is no longer invited to board meetings. She is told that she talks too much and is too aggressive. In April, Françoise Brougher was fired after a phone call from the boss that lasted only 10 minutes: “you have poor cross-functional relationships.”
Sexism in tech companies is a well-known subject today… but Françoise Brougher thought she had definitively broken through that famous glass ceiling. “In these environments, you quickly understand that as a woman you are different, but I am irrationally optimistic, so I refuse to see what I don’t like. For me, if someone is sexist, it’s not my problem, it’s theirs. I don’t let anyone prevent me from succeeding.” For a long time, this mentality allowed her not to question herself and to navigate successfully in these environments.
A glass ceiling collapsed on her head at Pinterest… But California laws protect against discrimination. Françoise is courageous and does not fear that the fallout from the affair will tarnish the rest of her career. So, she decides to hire a lawyer and tell her misadventures on Medium. She is joined by two other African-American executives mistreated at Pinterest. A group of shareholders then files a complaint against Pinterest’s CEO… Last December, she obtained the largest public individual settlement for gender discrimination in U.S. history. “Since that day, not a week goes by without a woman contacting me for advice. This has reinforced my conviction in the rightness of my approach. More and more women who are victims of discrimination are speaking out, and each word helps the next. A little more, even if we are still far from counting.”
Her victory is a victory for all women victims of discrimination, and her courage is also a call not to let our guard down!
Written by Emmanuelle P.
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