Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815 and she died on November 27, 1852. During her childhood, Ada received education through private tutors and at a certain point in her life, she was educated by Augustus De Morgan (mathematics professor at University of London). When Lovelace received word of Charles Babbage's new invention, the Difference Engine, she immediately dedicated her a majority of her life to being his associate. However Lovelace was most invested in Babbage's latest invention... The Analytical Engine. Analytical engine was a data storage device (early model of a computer) and Lovelace had something brilliant to contribute to its development. She discovered that the device could carry out an extensive sequence of mathematical operations, more specific Bernoulli numbers. This discovery would be classified as the first computer program! However this was only one of Lovelace's achievements. She had also was a noted poet and a countess well to Lord Byron at the time. Unfortunately Ada Lovelace did not receive any academic or honorary awards. Her skills were ignored and pushed aside by many, because of her being a woman. Even though Lovelace was not very well recognized, she is a symbol to minorities everywhere that no matter your position, one must strive to give all they have to offer, so to better the world.
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Charles Babbage was born on December 26, 1791, and later died on October 18, 1871. This brilliant individual would contribute to one of the greatest advances in computer science history...the digital computer. However, Babbage did not develop this invention out of the blue. As a boy Babbage taught himself algebra and basic math concepts. He further excelled in his education upon entering Trinity College Cambridge in 1811, took over the prestigious Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambrigde,later taught mathematics at the university. Then, in 1823 he got the go-ahead from the government to begin designing the Difference Engine. This engine consisted of a combination of toothed wheels (rather than binary digits) that would help function as a data-storing device (like most computers today). Although the design was never built, it contributed to the structure of what would later be Babbages' greatest achievements. Eventually in 1837 Babbage had begun sketching out what was called the Analytical Engine. This device was supposed to store even more data, and Ana Lovelace (invented first programmable machine) contributed to a line of coding that would allow the device to preform a sequence of calculations. Unfortunately the project was never finished, however it was the greatest leap towards a functioning computer that humanity had seen in a long time. While Babbage made other more minute contributions toward computer science such as the establishment of the Association for the Advancement of Science and the Statistical Society, and the invention of a small 8-digit calculator, these other to engines would remain his greatest developments.
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Joy Buolamwini was born in 1989 and is still alive today. She began her journey when she created a mirror at MIT that could use software to track her face and overlay an image of one of her heroes. However, it did not work on her black skin because of the bias in facial recognition systems from large companies who mainly used white men’s faces to train AI systems. Joy Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League where researchers and activists work together to ensure justice in the AI industry. She recognizes herself as a “poet of code” who shines light on algorithmic justice and racial/gender biases in AI services from large companies. She received her education at MIT, Georgia Tech, and Oxford University . She gave a TED Talk on algorithmic bias. She wrote op-eds for the New York Times. She received a $50,000 grant as the Grand Prize Winner of a national contest inspired by the movie Hidden Figures.
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