Bride of Science Romance, Reason, and Byron's Daughter

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The Barnes & Noble Review
An almost perfect embodiment of the union of opposites -- in this case science and poetry -- Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron, is best remembered among the cognoscenti for her namesake, the Department of Defense's computer language "Ada." This legacy is the result of her writings on Charles Babbage's plans for an "Analytical Engine," now recognized as the precursor to modern computers. In The Bride of Science Benjamin Woolley links Ada's personal struggles to the larger context of historical change, creating a fascinating lens through which to view the incredible social disruption during the early years of the industrial revolution and the ambivalence these changes wrought.

Ada's life spanned the years 1815 to 1852, during which the newly introduced rail lines and telegraph access made the power of technology a reality in people's lives. The Romantic movement was the backlash against those who would attempt to apply "scientific" thinking to every aspect of the human experience. As one of the Romantic movement's greatest prophets, Lord Byron's excessive indulgence of various illicit desires (one being particularly dangerous) led him to marry a woman who deluded herself into believing she could save him. Ada's mother, Annabella, was the dominant force in her life -- a self-righteous and self-serving woman who embraced the new virtues of rationality.

The marriage lasted barely long enough for Annabella to become pregnant, and she spent the rest of her life justifying the infamous separation from her celebrity husband. Annabella barred Byron from any contact with his daughter and put Ada on a strict regimen of moral and mathematical study to suppress any Byronic tendencies Ada may have inherited. To the public eye, Ada was a curiosity. Put upon in an entirely modern way, Ada was famous from the day she was born. Although Ada took up science with enthusiasm, her Byronic eccentricities and passions were not extinguished by logic. Like her father, Ada looked to marriage to save her, but her husband, the future Earl of Lovelace, was not able to control her in the end.

As an adult, Ada set out to find her mission, which she hoped would combine her two halves, and prove that the product of science and poetry would produce genius, not a monstrosity. Her work with Babbage was one attempt at a "poetical science" requiring imagination and rigor. She also indulged in many of the other popular ideas of the day, such as phrenology and mesmerism, with a more discerning eye than most. At the end of her life, she turned to the new work being done with that mysterious force, electricity, in the hopes of finding a molecular basis in the human nervous system to explain emotions. She was plagued by this time with both physical and mental disorders, and so also hoped to find some personal salvation in this quest. But her Byronic nature was getting stronger in the form of an affair and gambling addiction (there is an interesting speculation that she tried to develop a mathematical formula to beat the odds), and she finally succumbed to illness. In the end she requested to be buried next to the father she never knew in life. The Bride of Science is a wonderful portrait of the struggle between reason and passion.

--Laura Wood, Science & Nature Editor

New Scientist

It's a thriller.

Publishers Weekly

A life of pure reason, or of dangerous passion? No middle course appeared to be available for Lord Byron's unhappy daughter, Ada (1815-1852), who channeled her brilliance into mathematical pursuits and wrote what is considered one of the world's first computer programs. Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, never knew her father; her mother, convinced of her husband's moral depravity, fled from him just after the child was born and spent her life protecting Ada from his supposedly corrupting influence by forcing the girl into rigorous studies. Despite her formidable intellectual achievements, however, Ada was never fully able to reconcile her analytical mind with her unruly imagination and feelings. In this accessible biography--which follows at least three others published since 1977, now out of print or available only by special order--Woolley presents Ada as a symbol of her age, determined (but ultimately failing) to bridge the divide between Romantic excess and Victorian control. Subject to bouts of mania and depression and often physically ill, Ada struggled for recognition in a patriarchal society, refused to conform to accepted codes of social and sexual behavior, and insisted on the possibility of a "poetical science" that would unite reason with imagination. Woolley, who writes for the BBC, skillfully conveys the excitement and contradictions of the era, and builds maximum suspense into the book's episodic structure--an approach that serves well in this popular account of a complex life and time, even if it leaves unexplored too many questions about Ada's needs, motivations and constrained position in a male-dominated society. (Jan.) Forecast: Books about daughters of great figures (e.g., Galileo's Daughter and Einstein's Daughter) have been popular of late, and Ada is as fascinating a daughter as ever was born. This book is a natural for handselling, not only to the literati interested in all things Byronic, but to cyber-folk, many of whom will be aware of Ada's early work in computers (the U.S. Dept. of Defense named its computer language "Ada" in her honor), and even to the SF crowd, cultivated for this story through William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's classic The Difference Engine. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

First published in the United Kingdom in 1999, this is an entertaining biography of Augusta Ada Byron Lovelace, daughter of the renowned poet Lord Byron. Separated from Lord Byron shortly after Ada's birth, Lady Bryon raised her daughter in a strange and thoroughly controlled manner, limiting her access to both people and intellectual pursuits in order to keep Ada from developing any of the shortcomings she might have inherited from her father. As a result, Ada, who suffered from a variety of legitimate health problems, also developed serious psychological problems. As directed by her mother, Ada's educational focus was on science, and her relationship with Charles Babbage and the work she did in explaining and interpreting his Analytical Engine and Difference Machine, a precursor of the computer, were the culmination of her mathematical and technical studies. A fine study of Ada, this book is as much about her mother, Annabella, a woman who would not be crossed and who dominated her daughter's life right up to Ada's death at age 37. There is much controversy associated with Ada's life, and Woolley (Virtual Worlds) deals with it openly and philosophically. Some of his interpretations will surely be questioned, but for a biography filled with "sex, drugs, and mathematics" this is to be expected. Readers who enjoyed Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter will find this interesting.--Hilary Burton, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.