March is Women’s History Month, and this year’s theme is “Women Taking the Lead to Save Our Planet.” PMI Atlanta wants to take this time to celebrate women’s history by highlighting a famous woman’s contribution to our profession.

Project management can trace its roots back to the dawn of civilization, but it was really as recently as the 1950s that the profession got organized and began to standardize the tools and methodologies that have made the profession the success that it is today.

The complexities of computer science and information technology caused that profession to latch onto the project management methodologies to help deliver successful, large scale projects. Although the IT boom in project management is relatively recent, that profession can also trace its roots back over a hundred years – to the time of Ada Augustus Lovelace, Countess of Lovelace.

Born Augusta Ada Byron in 1815 in England, Ada was the only child of the famous poet, Lord Byron, and his wife, Annabella. At Ada’s young age of one month, Byron and his wife separated, Annabella taking Ada with her. Annabella remained the only parental figure in young Ada’s life.

Throughout a childhood fraught with illness, Ada continued her education, focusing on mathematics and science. When she was 17, she was introduced to Charles Babbage, consulting with him often on his difference engine. Babbage called Ada “the Enchantress of Numbers.”

Babbage’s difference engine is considered by many to be the earliest prototype of the modern computer, and Ada is considered the first programmer. Ada wrote an algorithm for the machine to calculate Bernoulli’s numbers. Though never tested in her lifetime, the algorithm proved to work when used in modern computers. Ada also predicted that such a machine as Babbage’s may one day be used to mechanically compose complex music and produce graphics, in addition to its mathematical importance.

Unfortunately, Ada died from uterine cancer at the very young age of 36. In her honor, in 1980 the U.S. Department of Defense named the Ada programming language after her. The British Computer Society awards an annual medal in her name, and holds an annual computer science competition for women.

Please take some time out this month to reflect on Ada’s contribution to computer science and information technology. For more information on Women’s History Month, and to read about other famous women’s contributions, visit womenshistorymonth.gov.