Forgotten women scientists (II): Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace was a famous mathematician.

She was born on 10th December 1815 in England. Her father, Lord Byron, was a famous poet and her mother, Anne Isabelle Milbanke, was a mathematician.

She married William King and they had 3 children.

She loved music, poetry, dancing and any form of arts in general. However, her mother wanted her to have a higher education in maths and science.

 

Ada Byron
Image from wikipedia

 

She lived in the UK and she worked with Charles Babbage, a famous mathematician. He invented a machine to perform complex mathematical calculations. Ada Lovelace completed his device inventing codes to handle letters,symbols and numbers, so she was considered the first computer programmer.

She died in London in 1852. In her honor a software was named Ada in 1979.

From http://www.famous-mathematicians.com/ada-lovelace/

 

Written by Andrea Otero, Rosalía Rivera and Antía Varela - 3rd A (9th grade)



 

 

Code breaking: Alan Turing

Alan Turing was an excellent mathematician and logician. He was born in June 23, 1912 in London.

During World War II he joined the Government Codes and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, where he created a machine that broke the enemy codes and shortened the war by two years. Later on, after the war he was given the OBE, an award for his services to the country.

In 1950, Turing wrote a book about the notion of an universal machine which is now the central concept of the modern computer. Two years after, in 1952, he was persecuted for homosexual acts, since at that time such behaviour was illegal.

Unfortunately, on 8 June 1954 Turing's housekeeper found him dead from cyanide poisoning.

 

Image from www.nature.com
 



From http://historysheroes.e2bn.org/hero/91

Written by Marisol Fernández, Noa García and Sofía López -   3rd A (9th grade).

Forgotten women scientists (I): Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner is a famous woman physicist who was born in Vienna in 1878. Her parents were Jewish and she had 7 brothers and sisters. As a child she was very good at science and math and she went to University where she studied physics.
 

Image from wikipedia.org

Meitner lived and worked in Austria, Germany, Sweden and UK. She worked with Otto Hahn for 30 years in Berlin. They both studied radioactivity and discovered the protactinium isotope. Later she became a physics professor at the University of Berlin, where she started her research on nuclear physics, discovering the nuclear fission in 1939. She carried out experiments on nuclear fission together with Hahn. He received the Physics Nobel Prize in 1944 for his scientific research into fission, but Meitner's research and discoveries were not recognised.

However, she received many different scientific awards and honors during her life.

She died in England in 1968 at the age of eighty-nine.

 

 

From http://famousfemalescientists.com/lise-meitner/

 

Written by Antía, Andrea and Rosalía - 3rd ESO (9th grade)

 

 

Alfred Nobel, the dynamite inventor

Alfred Nobel was a famous scientist, inventor and businessman and he was also the founder of the Nobel Prizes. He was born on October 21 (1833) in Stockholm, Sweden. His father was an engineer and inventor, and his mother came from a wealthy family. He had two older brothers and a younger one.

 

He lived in Stockholm until 1842. Then he moved to Russia with his family because his father had a successful business there. Alfred was interested in literature, chemistry and physics, but his father decided to send him to Paris to study and become a chemical engineer.

 

The Nobel family returned to Sweden in 1863, and Alfred concentrated on developing nitroglycerine as an explosive. Although his experiments resulted in accidents, he didn't give up. Alfred invented, thanks to his experiments, dynamite and he set up factories in 90 different places. He lived in Paris, but he travelled to his factories a lot. He worked in Stockholm, Hamburg, Paris, San Remo, etc. He also experimented in making synthetic rubber and leather and artificial silk.

 

He died in San Remo, Italy on December 10, 1896.

 

His last wish was to give prizes to those who have done their best for humanity. So the first Nobel prizes were in 1901.

 

Image from Wikipedia

 

 

From http://www.nobelprize.org/

 

Written by Nora, Olalla and María (3rd ESO - 9th grade).

 

 

Sir Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton is a very famous physicist and mathematican. He was born on January 4th, 1643 in Lincolnshire, England. His mother is Hanna Ayscought and his father is Isaac Newton. They were peasants. Newton never knew his dad because he died before he was born. His mother remarried Barnabás Smith, and his stepfather didn`t want him so he returned with her grandmother until his death. Isaac Newton studied in King`s school, in Grantham, in 1660. Then he studied at Cambridge University. Newton developed the principles of modern physics. He was famous because of his idea of universal gravitation, the reflection telescopes and the theory of light. Isaac Newton died in 1727.

 

From wikipedia.org

 

 

www.biography.com 

http://www-old.newton.ac.uk/newton.html

 

Written by Laura Blanco and Tania Conde - 3rd ESO A (9th grade).