This is Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of the poet Lord Byron:
As you can see, she was quite a pretty thing, very elegant and well turned-out:
Ada Lovelace also wrote the world’s first computer program, a series of calculations for a then-hypothetical machine of Charles Babbage’s imagination, the “Analytical Engine.” Her program was never run on this machine and she died in her mid-thirties of uterine cancer, but her brilliant mathematical mind (and the contributions of women to science and mathematics) is celebrated annually on March 24th on Ada Lovelace Day. Her imagine also apparently appears on the Microsoft product authenticity hologram stickers. Being pretty didn’t keep her from doing math. Neither did being bound in corsets and yards of fabric.
Since you all know I don’t think highly of perpetuating that ridiculous cultural myth that girls are (or should be) bad at math, I’d like to invite you to check out this beautiful Heroine: Ada Lovelace tee from ThinkGeek (a company that thinks smart girls rock). Due to the high number of sales of this shirt in its first month available, ThinkGeek is contributing to The Girl Effect, an organization to give girls a chance to pursue the educations they desperately need. Obviously, ThinkGeek and I aren’t the only ones who think Mathy Girls ought to be celebrated.
Don’t make your daughters’ minds into a joke. Don’t slap your daughters with a degrading stereotype and try to pretend it’s funny or “ironic.” Celebrate your mathy girl, your budding scientist, your future Ada Lovelace. Let her know that beauty and brains aren’t mutually exclusive, and that a brilliant mind is beautiful.
