Ada Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852)

Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, also known as the “Enchantress of Numbers.”

Why She Kicks Ass:

• She produced a design for a flying machine in 1828 – when she was only 13.
• She was a kickass mathematician in a time when it was considered literally dangerous to a woman’s health to know too much about math.
• She published a translation of an article on the Analytical Engine by Luigi Menabrea, adding extensive notes of her own while doing so.
• She is considered by many to be the world’s first computer programmer, thanks to her work assisting Charles Babbage. If Charles Babbage is the father of computers, Ada Lovelace is the mother of them.
• She speculated on the possibilities of computers for general purpose uses, beyond acting as simply fancy calculators, which ol’ Chuck Babbage did not.

Oh, and she just happened to be the daughter of Lord Byron, who called her his “princess of parallelograms.”