Jaisanthini World

The first computer programmer was a woman. Surprised? We were too. Stop to consider, though, why that is. Why are we so shocked that a woman could pioneer computer programming? Probably because the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have, throughout time, been largely dominated by men. Well, maybe. Except, they haven’t. That assumption is all kinds of wrong. So, who first researched AIDS? Who pioneered contraception? Who helped us to understand DNA, Jurassic fossils, or the ripples that occur when we throw a stone into water? Who developed prenatal determination of sex, or was the first dean of a medical school in Britain? You’ve probably guessed that the answer to all of the above is women, even if you have no idea of their names. So, back to that first computer programmer. Ada Lovelace, daughter of foremost Romantic Lord Byron, pioneered her craft in the 1840s – and was described by commonly acknowledged father of computing Charles Babbage as “An