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Ada Lovelace

1815–1852 · Mathematician

Portrait of Ada Lovelace
Antoine Claudet · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Bio

English mathematician who, in notes appended to her 1843 translation of a paper on Charles Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine, published what is widely regarded as the first algorithm intended for machine execution. She also argued that such a machine could manipulate symbols beyond numbers, anticipating general-purpose computing more than a century before it was built.