The Life and Contributions of Countess Ada Lovelace Unintended Consequences of Exclusion, Prejudice, and Stereotyping

The scientific life and contributions of Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, are becoming increasingly well-known 200 years after her birth. Ada Lovelace had a privileged existence but lived in a world where girls were limited in the subjects they were taught, where young women were excluded from universities and where gender stereotypes were rigidly enforced. Despite the world in which she lived, Ada is now known as the first computer scientist. Furthermore, her scientific interests extended beyond the thinking machine, to biophysics and mathematical modeling of biological processes, and she may have made even more significant contributions to science had she not died at the young age of 36. We discuss the concept that the unintended consequence of her exclusion from the standard approaches to learning and teaching enabled her genius to remain unfettered by conventional thinking and thus empowered her to become the visionary she was-suggesting that perhaps the greatest digital innovations will be found by disrupting the cultural constraints typically applied to technology and gender. © 1982-2012 IEEE.