Great Lives

TV presenter Konnie Huq chooses the mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace. With Matthew Parris. From Banking, to air traffic control systems and to controlling the United States defence department there's a computer language called 'Ada' – it's named after Ada Lovelace – a 19th century mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron. Ada Lovelace is this week's Great Life. She's been called many things – but perhaps most poetically by Charles Babbage whom she worked with on a steam-driven calculating machine called the Difference Engine an 'enchantress of numbers', as her similarly mathematical mother had been called by Lord Byron a "princess of parallelograms". Augusta 'Ada' Byron was born in 1815 but her parents marriage was short and unhappy; they separated when Ada was one month old and she never saw her father , he died when was eight years old. Her mother, Annabella concerned Ada might inherit Byron's "poetic tendencies" had her schooled her in maths and science to try to combat any madness