The Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene

Hucknall, Nottingham, England in the Diocese of Southwell

  Ada, Countess of Lovelace
1815 - 1852
  Augusta Ada Byron was born 10th December, 1815. She was brought up by her mother following her parents separation and was encouraged to develop her mathematical and scientific interests. In the Spring of 1834, she met Mary Somerville who had just published her work on mathematical astronomy, and Charles Babbage, who was beginning to develop plans for an Analytical Engine. In June of that year, Babbage developed the ideas for his machine at a seminar in Italy and an Italian mathematician, Menabrea, wrote a learned article on the subject. Ada translated the article into English and added footnotes and explanatory sections of her own which greatly improved and developed the original. This was published in 1843, and in it Ada speculated that such a machine might be used to compose complex music, produce graphics and have practical and scientific use. Based on examples provided by Babbage she worked out the steps by which the engine would calculate the results of mathematical problems. These were the first published examples of "computer programmes" and a software language developed by the United States Department of Defence was named "ADA" in her honour in 1979. Ada was more than a century ahead of her time and although computer science did not exist in her lifetime she developed ideas that only came to be recognised and understood in modern times.

In 1834 she married Richard King who later became the Earl of Lovelace. In 1852 she died of cancer, aged 36, the same age as her father when he died and she was buried at her own request by his side here in the Byron Vault at the Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene, Hucknall, the last member of the family to be buried here. 		 

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