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Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) is celebrated as "the first programmer" for her remarkable 1843 paper which explained Charles Babbage's designs for a mechanical computer. New research reinforces the view that she was a gifted, perceptive and knowledgeable mathematician.
Christopher Hollings and Ursula Martin of Oxford Mathematics, and Adrian Rice, of Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, are the first historians of mathematics to investigate the extensive archives of the Lovelace-Byron family, held in Oxford's Bodleian Library. In two recent papers in the Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics and in Historia Mathematica they study Lovelace's childhood education, where her passion for mathematics was complemented by an interest in machinery and wide scientific reading; and her remarkable two-year "correspondence course" on calculus with the eminent mathematician Augustus De Morgan, who introduced her to cutting edge research on the nature of algebra.
[...] The papers, and the correspondence with De Morgan, can be read in full on the website of the Clay Mathematics Institute, who supported the work, as did the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
[There apparently had been many claims that she lacked the background to have been able to produce the works attributed to her. These papers serve to show that she did, indeed, have the necessary background, curiosity, dedication, and gift for insights to have done so. -Ed.]
Source: University of Oxford Mathematical Institute
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday July 04 2017, @04:35PM (1 child)
I wish De Morgan had been my private calculus tutor to. I would like to think it would have made things so much easier.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 05 2017, @11:57AM
I'm glad I didn't have to spend 2 years on learning calculus...
Also, the concept that one "requires background" in order to do basic mathematics is fairly absurd. The end product of groundbreaking foundational publication is the antithesis of building upon background learning, it is making something new and insightful beyond the available background teachings of the day.
If you want to say that one "requires background" to interpret data from the LHC, o.k. - at least a few days of primer course in the data formats and network access protocols, but even that can be self-taught with determination, internet access and a bit of luck. Describing how to "program" a machine akin to a Jacquard weaver's loom, but capable of sequential computation... the societies thinking that only via "higher learning" one might become capable of such insights need to get over themselves. Sure, you need a PhD to get a tenured teaching position at a higher level University, but no such education is required to understand the material.
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