Paul Landon wrote: >As an off-topic footnote, anyone interested in History or Biographies >should look up the some of the flowery characters mentioned above. >Some biographies have been "ethically cleansed" and have missing data, >data that should never be allowed to detract from their Mathematical >and Engineering greatness but is still fascinating. Some of those >stories could cause tittering schoolboys to find Maths interesting or >sniggering schoolgirls to enjoy Computing. They could even be used to >justify increased Federal funding; so that this century's Ada doesn't >have to finance herself that way ;-) Paul, are there any biographies (esp. of Ada, Babbage or Turing) which you especially recommend? I found 8 matches for the search string "ada lovelace" at amazon.com, but few of these had accompanying reviews, and for those that did, the reviews often diverged wildly. The ones that look the most promising: 1) "Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord byron's Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer" Betty A. Toole (ed.), Ada King Lovelace / hardcover / 1998 Betty A. Toole appears to be an acknowledged expert on Ada Lovelace, but both of the positive editorial notes are provided by Ms. Toole herself. The book description doesn't mention whether this is basically just a collection of letters or whether Toole and Lovelace provide historical context and interpretation along with the letters. See also my note about book 2. 2) "Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: Prophet of the Computer Age" Betty A. Toole / softcover / 1998 There appears to be a stark division by gender in reviews of this (and other) books about Ada: the men mostly seem to argue that she gets way too much credit, and the women idolize her. This book had 3 customer reviews on amazon.com: the first (a man) says it's good but overly flattering, the second (a woman) says it's excellent, and the third (a man) calls it hero-worship rather than biography. 3) "The Calculating Passion of Ada Byron" Joan Baum / hardcover / 1986 There were no editorial descriptions or customer reviews of this book. Has anyone out there read it? 4) "Ada: A Life and Legacy" Dorothy Stein / out of print Anybody read this one? 5) "Ada Byron Lovelace: The Lady and the Computer" (People in Focus Series) / Mary Dodson Wade / publisher out of stock. Seems to be geared towards the teen set. Anybody read it? Cheers, -Ernst p.s.:"Ada, or Ardor" by Nabokov is not about the aforementioned Ada, but is worth reading nonetheless. :) _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
