orig. Lady Augusta Ada Byron
born Dec. 10, 1815, London, Eng.
died Nov. 29, 1852, London
English mathematician.
Her father was the poet Lord Byron . In 1835 she married William King, 8th Baron King; when he was created an earl in 1838, she became a countess. She became interested in Charles Babbage 's analytical machines as early as 1833, and in 1843 she translated and annotated an article about them by Luigi Federico Menabrea. For creating a program for Babbage's prototype of a digital computer, she has been called the first computer programmer. The programming language Ada is named for her.