IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016 - 46

The Life and
Contributions
of Countess
Ada Lovelace
Unintended Consequences of Exclusion,
Prejudice, and Stereotyping
Imogen R. Coe and Alexander Ferworn

T

he scientific life and contributions
of Augusta Ada King, Countess of
Lovelace, are becoming increasingly well-known 200 years after
her birth. Ada Lovelace had a privileged existence but lived in a
world where girls were limited in
the subjects they were taught, where young women
were excluded from universities and where gender
stereotypes were rigidly enforced. Despite the world
in which she lived, Ada is now known as the first
computer scientist. Furthermore, her scientific interests extended beyond the "thinking" machine, to
biophysics and mathematical modeling of biological
processes, and she may have made even more significant contributions to science had she not died
at the young age of 36. We discuss the concept that
the unintended consequence of her exclusion from
the standard approaches to learning and teaching
enabled her genius to remain unfettered by conventional thinking and thus empowered her to become
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2618679
Date of publication: 12 December 2016

46

1932-4529/16©2016IEEE

the visionary she was - suggesting that perhaps
the greatest digital innovations will be found by disrupting the cultural constraints typically applied to
technology and gender.

Paradoxes of a Complicated Birthright
The aim of education for young women born into the
aristocracy in the 17th and 18th centuries was to make
them as marriageable as possible. Therefore, young
women were typically schooled at home, by governesses or carefully selected tutors, in subjects such as languages, literature, and music. These were the attitudes
of royalty and therefore were unlikely to be challenged
or contested. King James I is reported to have commented that "To make women learned and foxes tame
has the same effect - to make them more cunning" -
in reference to an inquiry about some minimal additional education for his daughter [3].
"Safe" subjects, such as music and languages were
stereotyped as being feminine, and education in these
topics typically excluded opportunities for contentious or
lively debate that might have challenged the status quo,
in contrast to the teaching of logic or science that
might have embroiled women in "unfeminine" discussion.

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

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DECember 2016



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