Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852) is best known for a remarkable article about Babbage’s unbuilt computer, the Analytical Engine, which not only presented the first documented computer program, but also, going well beyond Babbage’s ideas of computers as manipulating numbers, outlined their creative possibilities and the limits of what they could do.

The comprehensive archive of Lovelace’s papers preserved in Oxford’s Bodleian Library displays Lovelace’s wide scientific interests, and her grasp of the potential of mathematics as a uniting link between the material and symbolic worlds.

In this talk we start to explore Lovelace, her background, her scientific ideas and her contemporary legacy, and reflective more broadly on the role of history of computing in present day thinking about the discipline.

Professor Ursula Martin CBE FREng FRSE DSc is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, and a Visiting Professor in Mathematics at the University of Oxford. After a career in research and research leadership spanning many aspects of computing and mathematics, she now works on the context, long term development and impact of fundamental ideas in computer science

• 5.45pm – 6pm: Arrive at the venue
• 6pm – 6.45pm: The scientific life of Ada Lovelace – talk by Professor Ursula Martin
• 6.45pm-7pm: Audience Q&A
• 7pm – 8pm: Drinks and nibbles reception
• 8pm: Event close