Ada Lovelace: Analyst, Metaphysician, and Founder of Scientific Computing This post is in honour of Ada Lovelace who was one of the world's first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. In the nineteenth century, she wrote programmes for the Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine (which the Babbage, the designer, never managed to build). She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
I originally came across Ada in Margaret Alic’s book Hypatia’s Heritage (ISBN-10: 0704339544) which begins to uncover the vast history of scientific and mathematical foremothers whose work had been hidden or falsely claimed by husbands and fathers.
Ada Day is in celebration of her and all the women in technology, who, just as Ada did, suffer from lack of recognition for their role in technology of any type. The link below is to the website where bloggers have pledged to post a blog on 24th March naming a woman in technology and giving her recognition that she might otherwise lack.
http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay
However, rather than choose one woman to celebrate, I wanted to look at the barriers still facing women and girls in this field in Scotland. A prodigious amount is talked in education and political arenas about increasing the numbers of women in science and technology, but what is the evidence of various efforts in making a difference to the numbers of girls choosing the relevant courses at school and in further education?
On checking out a random sample of online information, I looked firstly into the apprenticeships scheme for young people in Scotland. I’m sceptical about the (should be) gender-neutral description of apprentice, because when I was growing up, only boys were given apprenticeships. Has anything changed in this century?
Modern Apprenticeships (MA) are aimed at offering those over 16 the chance of paid employment and training in a range of IT and information and communication technologies. MA schemes are run by Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, who provide extensive information about MA's on their website. This link has photographs of one female and three males – very encouraging to women and girls!
http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/se/sds/sds-ntp.htm
But hold on - their case studies highlight two young women.
http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/publications/ma_case_studies.pdf
On the other hand, this initiative promotes technology careers specifically for girls. I have no contact with anyone in secondary school, so I’ve no idea how well this is rolled out.
http://www.girlsgetwise.org/index.htm
And this organisation is making efforts in further education to ensure more young women have the opportunity to get into technology work.
http://www.engender.org.uk/UserFiles/File/Events_Training/Resource%20centre%20for%20women%20in%20science%20leaflet.doc
What may also help is having a woman in the role of Chief Scientific Adviser in Scotland.
http://www.twine.com/item/11pch50ny-5b/the-gender-perspective-scotland-s-chief-scientific-adviser-prof-anne-glover-talks-science-and-innovation-in-scotland-and-the-eu
I’m not the only one to question how quickly there will be a reversal of decades of male-only apprenticeships, as EHRC findings demonstrated how the MA scheme mirrored the gender segregation of jobs in the wider labour market.
http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/scotland/research/Pages/ResponsetoTheApprenticeshipBill.aspx
In February, the Scottish Government launched a new advertising campaign to encourage young people to become involved in science. A study of pupil attitudes concluded that at S3 level there are very large gender imbalances in interest in technology and physical science areas. To redress this, the curriculum needs to be better designed to attract girls into learning about technology.
http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/stem/projects/the%20rose%20survey%20in%20scotland/
From a brief whizz around the web I'd conclude that in spite of there being a considerable amount of interest in encouraging girls into technology and science, it is a bit hit or miss, as to whether initiatives are working. From what I can judge, the position in Scotland is no better, and no worse than that in many countries. It needs more effort and many more positive role models to persuade girls to get into technology from school rather than, as is the case for some of the women in technology I am acquainted with who retrained after a first career in another field.
What would Ada think of all this? As a forward thinking, educated young woman, I hope she would have approved of the efforts to encourage girls into better-paid and rewarding work. Perhaps on Ada Day in another ten years there will be more progress to report of girls and women entering the broad field that is encompassed in the term technology, in droves.
2 comments:
Hi Jes,
I kept in mind your blog on Ada Lovelace, partly because I’d always heard about Babbage yet nothing about Ada, and partly because she was in a field of science so esoteric that no practitioners come easily to mind; no modern ones and certainly no women: mathematics.
I watched the last in the series of BBC4’s progs on the history of maths recently, on the twentieth century. Presented by the user-friendly Marcus du Sautoy, prof of maths at Oxbridge (I suggest his Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_du_Sautoy in preference to his own website, which is a little too exciting for a man of my age http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/~dusautoy/ ). I had to watch it, because I’d come across the important names in modern maths through the science fiction novel ‘White Light’ (1980) by Rudy Rucker - a superb novel with maths at its core - highly recommended, if you can deal with something more than a few pixies and a morose dwarf trying to preserve the feudal order. The important names are Cantor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor and Hilbert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert (and the important concept infinity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity – and its many types (not sure if I’ve got this right, but I gather that some infinities are bigger than others)).
Among the many mathematicians Prof du Sautoy mentioned was the American woman Julia Robinson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Robinson , who lived from 1930 to 1985. He was particularly good on describing the obstacles that she had to overcome as a woman to become a mathematician.
In introducing Julia, the prof mentioned two other women mathematicians, though sadly neither was Ada: Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Kovalevskaya and Emmy Noether (1882-1935) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether (and http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/noether.html) . In talking about Noether, du Sautoy said something like she had not been able to fulfill her promise/work.
I looked up these women in my paperback Dictionary of Mathematics, Borowski and Borwein, 3rd ed, 1991, Unwin Hyman (a cheap paperback I bought in a discount bookshop, only to discover it’s not for laymen: I now enjoy looking things up in it just to see how far it removes the little understanding I thought I had, e.g., ‘ pi, n. 1. a transcendental number…’ (though it permits itself the odd joke: ‘graph paper, n. paper printed with intersecting lines, for drawing graphs, diagrams, etc).
Perversely, only the ‘unfulfilled’ Noether appeared, but not just appeared, she has four entries, for her biog, and for ‘Noetherian Module’, ‘Noetherian Radical’ and ‘Noetherian Ring’. This is a lot better than many of the male mathematicians du Sautoy mentioned (Andre Weil is missing – brother of Simone), and indeed than one I’ve actually heard of: Thomas Bayes. He has no biog though two entries for his concepts (I’m familiar with the adjective ‘Bayesian’).
The great thing for me, beginning with your blog and continuing with du Sautoy’s prog, is my discovery of a world of female mathematicians.
Check out this website ‘Biographies of Women Mathematicians’ http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/women.htm .
Jerzz
Thanks for such a well researched comment.
Not being in that field at all, I'd not heard of mathematicians of any flavour, so it is heartening to be told of a few women. I'll enjoy exploring the links you provided.
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