Ada

At a used bookstore today, I ran across The Calculating Passion of Ada Byron by Joan Baum. Long been enthralled with Ada (1815-1852) known as the first computer programmer. Here's an excerpt from the book:

She had also dared to dream, to imagine what computers might do with their power to repeat and loop and change course in midstream. And she had exercised her imagination when time and place were against her, when women were excluded from the halls of learning and generally dissuaded from pursuing subjects like mathematics, even in the drawing rooms.

Never heard of Ada? Here's a fun, short documentary, narrated by Hannah Fry, that spotlights this remarkable 19th century mathematician.