Known in her day as the "Enchantress of Numbers," Ada Lovelace was one of the most fascinating women of the 19th century. With mathematician Charles Babbage, inventor of the Analytical Engine, she developed a set of instructions for mechanically calculating Bernoulli numbers, in effect, creating the first computer program. Yet, as noted British journalist Benjamin Woolley reveals in this captivating, critically acclaimed portrait, Ada was far from being the cool and dispassionate exemplar of the modern scientific spirit. Born in 1815, the product of one of the most sensational (and disastrous) marriages of the 19th century - that between the mad, bad, and dangerous to know poet, Lord Byron, and the celebrated intellectual Annabella Milbanke - Ada came to embody the widening rift between the worlds of Romanticism, typified by her brilliant, sybaritic father, and of reason, represented by her severe mother. The Bride of Science offers profound insights into the seemingly irreconcilable gulf between art and science that persists to this day.
Paperback copy, Author: Woolley, Benjamin, McGraw-Hill Publishing Co
