Ada Lovelace is probably the most famous thought leader in computer science. In her book, Vera Weidenbach explains precisely how Lovelace not only designed the first program in her major work “Notes”. Above all, she described the possibility that machines could operate beyond numbers with symbols, music or language. Weidenbach convincingly links Lovelace’s analytical talents with her social skills: Ada was an intellectual and strategic networker.
The book is an intensively told approach to the mathematician. It is particularly strong where it identifies the structural barriers to which Ada was subjected: a strictly regulated female education that promoted mathematical training but disciplined her intellectual independence. Weidenbach’s explicitly feminist perspective makes these limitations visible. She expresses justified indignation at the narrow limits that were placed on even privileged women in the 19th century.
The book’s weaknesses lie in its consistent focus on gender issues and criticism of genius. The economic, institutional and technological-historical contexts of the industrial revolution are pushed into the background. A wider perspective would have shown the scope of Lovelace’s insights even more clearly and would have located her originality even more clearly in the interplay of ideas, apparatus and actors. Sabine Delorme
Vera Weidenbach
Ada Lovelace – visionary and genius
Rowohlt Verlag, 256 pages, € 24,–
ISBN 978-3-498-00754-6