Posted by Benjamin on: 03.24.2009 /
Suw Charman Anderson has declared today Ada Lovelace day. Ada Lovelace, the daughter and only child of the English poet Lord Byron, is hailed by many as the first computer programmer. She wrote “software” for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine back in the 1840’s. Suw complains of misogyny in the tech world, and references psychologist Penelope Lockwood, who found that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones (which is another interesting discussion all by itself). I kind of see Suw’s point, as I had certainly heard of Babbage, but never of Lovelace.
Towards the end of overcoming the aforementioned misogyny and giving women the tech industry role models to look up to, Suw promised to write a blog on March 24 about a woman in tech whom she admired, but only if 1000 others promised to do the same. Way more than 1000 people joined her, making today the first ever Ada Lovelace Day. The whole thing seems to be a rather huge success, as there are currently 76,000 google results for “Ada Lovelace day”. Here’s a list of many of the blog posts.
One of the women I learned about in reading through some of the posts is Ptolemais of Cyrene, who formulated the commutativity of multiplication: AB=BA. Who knew?
Do you know, or know of, any women who have excelled in mathematics or technology whom you would like to mention?
Comment by: joe
1Well, there is my wife…