Ada Lovelace Day
Today is Ada Lovelace Day. So I will blog about some women in technology.
I'll start with Ada Lovelace herself. She was a remarkable person. She did a lot of theoretical work on computer programming in the 1800s, and wrote the first computer program. She wrote it for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, an early prototype of a computer that had not yet been built when she wrote the programs. She has been called the mother of computer programming.
I'll mention a few others:
[Edit: Here are some other Ada Lovelace Day posts:
I'll start with Ada Lovelace herself. She was a remarkable person. She did a lot of theoretical work on computer programming in the 1800s, and wrote the first computer program. She wrote it for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, an early prototype of a computer that had not yet been built when she wrote the programs. She has been called the mother of computer programming.
I'll mention a few others:
- Grace Hopper, who wrote the first compiler,
- Stephanie Kwolek, who invented Kevlar,
- Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau, who designed the first commercial penicillin production plant,
- Roberta Williams, mother of the adventure game genre of computer game,
- Sheila Widnall, designer of MIT's advanced wind tunnel facility,
- Florence Nightingale, mother of nursing and pioneer in using statistics in public health,
- Josephine Cochrane, inventor of the dishwashing machine,
- Agnodike, the first woman to legally practice medicine in ancient Athens,
- Émilie du Châtelet, who predicted infra-red radiation and showed that the kinetic energy of an object is proportional to the square of its velocity,
- Eva Ekeblad who discovered how to make alcohol from potatoes and wore potato flowers in her hair,
- Mary Lou Jepsen, one of the founders of the One Laptop Per Child project,
- The Japanese Women who were early-adopters of Hiragana,
- Huang Tao-Pho, a textile technician who introduced the process of cotton growing and processing from Hainan island to the Sung-chiang region of China in 1295 A.D.,
- Tapputi-Belatekallim, a chemist in ancient Mesopotamia,
- Paphnutia, an Egyptian alchemist circa 300 A.D.,
- Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space,
- The List of Craters on Venus, named after famous women.
[Edit: Here are some other Ada Lovelace Day posts:
- List of Ada Lovelace Day Posts
- Kate St. Claire writes about Delia Derbyshire
- Other posts about Delia Derbyshire
- Flying Squirrel writes about Barbara Liskov
- Honora Smith, great-great-great niece of Ada Lovelace
- Nalo Hopkinson writes about Jocelyn Harrison
- Emily writes about her mother
- Ian Douglas, of the Telegraph, writes about five women
- John Pittman writes about Hedy Lamarr. I think it's cool that she was an inventor AND a movie star.
- Ada Lovelace Day on Wordpress
- Linda Sherman writes about Esther Dyson
- A post in French about Ada Lovelace Day
- Zoe Rose writes about Lucille Ball
- Kevin Anderson writes about his wife Suw Charman-Anderson, who started Ada Lovelace Day
- Angela Thomas writes about Sherry Turkle
- Hippiesque Olivier posts about Hypatia
- David Bennett writes about Dr. Chung-Pei Ma
- Aiiya writes about Medieval Women
- flewellyn writes about Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
- Jules writes about Fabiola Gianotti