Augusta Ada Byron was born December 10, 1815, in London, England. Her father was Lord Byron, a world-famous poet — and her mother was Lady Anne Isabella Byron. Only a few weeks after Ada was born her parents separated and her father left England. When Ada was 8 he passed away, so Ada never met her famous father. 

Early Childhood

Many times during her childhood, Ada was sick. When she was eight she had lots of headaches, then when she was 14 she had measles and had to stay in bed for nearly a year! Eventually, she was able to walk with crutches, but during this time she continued to study and learn about her favorite subjects such as math.

Unlike most girls at her time, Ada was taught math and science by her tutors. A tutor is someone who teaches children individually, which means she didn’t go to a normal school like kids in our day. Ada’s mother insisted she learned math and science and made sure she worked very hard to be educated. Sometimes her mother made her lie still for long periods of time because she thought it would teach her to have self-control. Self-control is being able to control your emotions and behavior. But from a young age, Ada showed talent with numbers, meaning she was very good at math. 

When Ada was 12, she decided she wanted to figure out how to fly. Very carefully, she planned out how she would do this and first designed her own wings. She tried different materials of different sizes, she studied birds to figure out how they flew. She even wrote a book called Flyology with drawings and descriptions about how someone would fly. Her final idea was to use steam power to fly. She never attempted to fly herself, but her investigations were a good example of how curious she was and the passion she had for a single project.  

Famous Acquaintances

When Ada was young she met many different famous scientists, inventors, and authors due to her social position. She often went to court and became popular even at a young age due to her smarts. At parties, some of the famous people she met were Michael Faraday, Charles Dickens, and Charles Babbage, a well-known inventor. Charles Babbage became Ada’s mentor, which means someone who taught her personally. She began to learn advanced math at this time and was very interested in Babbage’s ideas. Babbage was one of the first people to have the idea for a computer. He imagined a machine that could do the math on its own and he eventually created this machine, which he called The Difference Engine (Learn more about the history of computer science). Ada was fascinated by this new machine — which became one of the earliest versions of a computer. Babbage went on to create another machine called The Analytical Engine.

Ada Publishes Her Ideas

Ada also knew many languages, so she was asked to translate an article about Babbage’s Analytical Engine. But while making the translation she added many of her own ideas. The notes and ideas she added ended up being three times longer than the article! Her article was later published in an English Science Journal. In the article, Ada shared her ideas about how codes could be used to handle letters and numbers. She also had the idea of how these codes could be used to loop computer programs. Because of all of her original ideas, many consider Ada to be the first computer programmer! 

William King

In 1835, Adam married a wealthy Baron named William King, who later became the Earl of Lovelace, so Ada became the Countess of Lovelace. They had three homes and lived in luxury, both sharing a love of horses. Together they also had three children. In 1837 Ada became very sick and due to some of the medications she was given suffered from other problems. At the age of 36, Ada passed away from cancer.

Ada’s Contributions

While she was alive not many people read Ada’s article about computer programming. It wasn’t until the 1950s that her article was found and people realized how brilliant her ideas about computer programming were. Her ideas were shared in new books about computer programming. In 1980 the United States military named their new programming language after her, calling it “Ada.” Also, the Association for Women in Computing has an Ada Lovelace Award each year and since 1988 the British Computer Society awards a Lovelace Medal, named after Ada.  

Like Ada, you can be curious about the world around you and take the time to study subjects such as math and science. Ada not only learned about these subjects, but she took what she learned and started her own projects, like investigating how to fly and writing her own book. Ada showed that it was important to meet lots of different people and learn from their ideas. This is another great way you can learn, too, by meeting new people and asking lots of questions! Have you ever wanted to create your own app or website? You can do this by learning computer programming. If you’re interested in learning more about coding check out code.org or Scratch, which is a website kids can use to learn how to code.

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Have you ever wondered what makes a rainbow? This is a question that many children wonder about, and now, most parents have a ready answer (though some might encourage you to guess anyways!). But in the past, people didn’t know how these beautiful arcs of color formed in the sky. Some people were curious enough to ask why, but until the 1600s, no one did much more than make thoughtful guesses. It would take a mind nearly as bright as the sun to solve that and many other mysteries of how nature works. His discoveries paved the way for the modern fields of physics, astronomy, and math.

Early Life of Isaac Newton 

The person who discovered what makes a rainbow was born into a rather dull world. Isaac Newton’s story begins on a sheep farm surrounded by apple orchards in rural England on Christmas day in 1642. Born prematurely to a poor family, no one expected the sickly infant to survive, but he did! Unfortunately, his father wasn’t so lucky. While little Isaac would live to be 84 years old, his father died three months before he was born. Isaac’s mother remarried to a well-off minister when he was two years old. Isaac never liked his stepfather and lived with his grandparents for much of his early childhood.

Isaac’s mind was so bright and active that he needed little else to hold his interest in the quiet hamlet where he lived. He wanted to know how the world worked and found all kinds of questions to occupy his mind. His mother, however, didn’t see much value in education, and after sending him to school briefly, pulled him out and tried to get him to help with the farm work. Isaac hated farm work–it kept him from exploring the many big questions about the world that flooded his head. Fortunately, Isaac’s uncle and his teacher both saw what a brilliant intellect he possessed. Seeing how poorly Isaac performed as a farmhand, his mother eventually took their advice and sent her son back to school. 

Isaac flourished in school, where he studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics. When he had learned all he could at the local school, he headed off to Cambridge University. He mostly ignored his fellow students, even his roommate, and spent most of his time alone in his room. There he could let his mind play– with the ideas of the ancient philosophers, the observations of famous astronomers, and complicated mathematical formulae. His books, his quill pen, and the shadows creeping across the walls seemed to be the only company he needed as he delved into these subjects in a search for truth. 

After graduating from Cambridge, Isaac returned home for two years. An outbreak of bubonic plague was sweeping England, and he felt it was best to isolate himself. This also suited Isaac’s preferences. He finally had an excuse to spend all his time alone in his studies, and he took full advantage. He spent his days reading, calculating, and setting up experiments.

Isaac Newton’s Experiments

Some of Isaac’s experiments didn’t work out. He tried to concoct a cure for the plague using rose water and turpentine, but it didn’t work. He also dabbled in alchemy, attempting to create gold from other, non-precious materials, a hobby he would come back to many times over his life. We now know this is impossible, but many people at the time thought it could be done.

Isaac’s experiments with light had better outcomes. He was fascinated by prisms, crystals shaped like triangles that create rainbows when light shines through them. Isaac was curious why this happened. Most people at the time thought that prisms somehow “corrupted” white light, adding in the colors of the rainbow, but Isaac suspected this wasn’t true. His experiments led him to the conclusion that plain white light from the sun was actually made up of all these different colors, and the prism split them apart. 

In one experiment, Isaac set up three prisms in a row so that light from a window would shine through them, but their rainbow colors would overlap on the edges. Where the broken-up light from different prisms overlapped, the wall was white! The colors had mixed again into white light! He also lined up two prisms, putting a wall with a hole between them. He set up the first prism so that only the red light from the rainbow hit the hole in the wall and went on to hit the second prism. The red light passed through the second prism, hitting another wall beyond. This light couldn’t be broken up anymore, and of course, the second prism didn’t “add” colors to it, which should have happened if prisms worked the way other people thought. If Isaac rotated the first prism slightly, he could direct the blue, or yellow, or orange light to pass through the hole and onto the second prism. With each color he tried, the light hit at a different point on the final wall after passing through the second prism! Each color bent at its own special angle when it passed through the prism. 

These were simple experiments–you could even ask your parents to buy some inexpensive prisms and try them yourself. Some of his experiments I wouldn’t recommend trying at home. He also tried to find out if he could see the rainbow colors of light by pushing on the back of his eyeball with a long, blunt sewing needle. Again, don’t try this at home! Still, Isaac’s unique mind let him imagine new ways to explore how light really worked instead of just believing what others had said before. 

But, if you’ve heard one story about Isaac Newton before now, it’s probably about how he discovered gravity. That story recounts how an apple fell on his head and led him to the idea that there was a special force called gravity. This is also the story that Isaac liked to tell about the discovery! Gravity, Isaac theorized, is the force that makes larger objects, like the earth, pull smaller objects, like you and me and the apple, toward them. All objects, even very small ones, have gravity, but small objects only have a tiny bit compared to something as massive as the Earth. Isaac realized that gravity could explain not only the apple falling from the tree, but also the orbits of the moon and planets.

The idea of gravity led Isaac to think in new ways about how objects move. He experimented with motion and force, and formulated his three famous laws of motion based on these experiments. The first law was that if an object is at rest, or standing still, it would stay that way unless something came along and pushed or pulled it. Likewise, if an object was moving, it would keep moving in a straight line unless, again, something pushed or pulled it to make it stop. These pushes and pulls are called “forces.” The second law says that how much an object speeds up has to do with both how strong of a force is applied and how heavy the object is. Finally, his third law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, forces come in pairs. Imagine you and a friend are ice skating. If you face each other, put your palms together, and push, both of you will be propelled backward. If you’re about the same size, both of you will go about the same distance. But if one of you is much bigger, the smaller person will go back farther and faster. 

Newton’s Explorations in Mathematics

Isaac also worked out the math that explained his laws. Some of this math was fairly simple, but when it came to explaining gravity and the orbits of planets things got complicated. In fact, he developed a new branch of math called calculus to explain what he was seeing. Calculus is a kind of math used to describe things that are continuously changing, getting faster and slower. Think of the curve that a ball follows through the air when you throw it, or how fast a rocket is going at any given time as it blasts into space. These actions involve motions and forces and objects that are different weights and sizes. They get faster or slow down at different times. Very complicated! 

Isaac Newton didn’t share his discoveries about calculus for a long time. He didn’t enjoy the attention his big discoveries brought him, and may have wanted to avoid it. He just wanted to discover the truth about how the universe worked. When he finally did tell people about it, another mathematician named Gottfried Leibniz had also come up with the same kind of math!  Newton and Leibniz would both argue that they were first, but it didn’t really matter. Both were very smart and had come up with the ideas on their own. 

After the plague died down, Isaac returned to Cambridge and became professor. He continued to spend most of his time studying and experimenting. He often ignored his own needs while deep in thought and study. He’d stay up late at night thinking, writing and experimenting. When he did sleep, he usually didn’t change into pajamas, and he went days without combing his hair. He ate simple meals of porridge or milk and eggs, and at times ate only foods from vegetables. 

Isaac Newton’s Later Life

As Isaac got older, he began to take on some new and unexpected responsibilities. He was chosen to represent Cambridge University in Parliament, which is part of the government. True to his introverted nature, he rarely spoke up in debates. Later, he was chosen to run the Royal Mint, which was the part of the government that made money. 

Isaac liked the capital, London, and moved there. Although he was never on good terms with his half-siblings from his mother’s second marriage, it seems he liked his nieces and nephews. He lived with his niece, Catherine Barton for many years, and left his papers and journals to her. He split the rest of his belongings between all his nieces and nephews.

Isaac Newton once wrote that truth was his greatest friend. Few people–if any–have contributed as much to scientific discovery as he did. We’ve only touched the surface of all his accomplishments. His work in calculus and physics launched an entirely new era in science. He set an example for future scientists by carefully designing experiments to answer very specific questions. His laws of motion helped later scientists send people to space on rockets and return them to Earth safely. He scrutinized the natural world and challenged assumptions about how things worked. The truth was his greatest friend, but he also proved himself a great friend to truth. 

Sources

https://www.coolkidfacts.com/laws-of-motion/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

https://www.wondriumdaily.com/the-discovery-of-gravity-and-laws-of-motion-by-isaac-newton/

Krull, Kathleen (2013) Lives of the Scientists: Experiments, Explosions (and what the Neighbors Thought). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York.

The post History of Isaac Newton for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, change was in the air. New ideas about independence, how people should work and govern themselves, were spreading. Colonists in North America were fighting a revolution against British rule. In England, factories were popping up along river banks, where huge mill-wheels used the energy of the rushing water to power machines. France had factories too, but it also had philosophy, art and fashions that people around the world imitated. But there was one thing that this fast-changing world was not ready for: Sophie Germain. 

Sophie was born in Paris, France, in the same year that the Americans signed their Declaration of Independence from Britain: 1776. Before Sophie grew up, revolution would come to France too, and it would change her life, shaping her into the person she would become. A person that didn’t fit the mold. A woman who thought and worked tirelessly on a subject women weren’t supposed to be interested in. 

Sophie’s family included father, Ambroise-François; her mother, Marie-Madeline, and two sisters: an older one also named Marie-Madeline, and younger one named Angélique-Ambroise. Sophie’s father was a wealthy silk merchant and politician, so the family always had what they needed. But sometimes things happen that we just can’t avoid. When Sophie was 13, One of these unavoidable things happened. The French revolution started, spurred on by an economic crisis that caused many people to suffer. The common people wanted more rights, and angry people were marching through the streets. 

It was too dangerous for Sophie to leave the house, so she looked for things to do inside. She spent much of her time in father’s library. She was especially drawn to books about mathematics. In one book, she found the story of a famous Greek mathematician and engineer, Archimedes. Archimedes  invented many ingenious contraptions. They moved things up and down with pulleys, counted the miles carts had traveled, and even plucked enemy ships out of the water. But the story that captivated Sophie had to do with a simple drawing in the sand. Roman forces had invaded Archimedes’ home island of Syracuse. As the soldiers stormed the island, Archimedes was lost in thought over a geometric diagram he’d drawn in the sand, and didn’t run to safety, so he was killed by the invading Roman forces. Wanting to honor her mathematical hero, Sophie taught herself all the math she could.

At first her parents discouraged her. They refused to light fire in her room or let her have warm clothes at night, thinking this would keep her from late-night study sessions. But Sophie found a way. When she was sure her parents were in bed, she lit candles, bundled herself in blankets, and took out the math books she’d hidden. She teased out patterns in the numbers and worked through equations. Maybe she even traced diagrams with her finger in the ash of that cold fireplace in her room, imagining Archimedes with his sand. She taught herself Latin so she could read famous mathematical works by Isaac Newton and Leonard Euler. At one point, a famous mathematician named Jaques Antoine-Joseph Cousin visited Sophie’s father at their house. Meeting him inspired Sophie to study even harder. Eventually, Sophie’s mother saw that her daughter was not going to give up, and secretly supported her studies.

As she grew into a young woman, Sophie wished she could study and work with other mathematicians. But women could not attend universities in France at the time. Still, Sophie found a way. A new university opened in Paris, which promised to send lecture notes to anyone who wanted them. Sophie took advantage, requesting, then carefully studying, the notes of another famous mathematician, Joseph Louis Lagrange. But just keeping up with advances in math wasn’t enough for Sophie. She wanted to be a part of those advances. She wanted to contribute. 

But again, Sophie had to find a way. She began writing to Lagrange about his work, using a false name M. LeBlanc to hide the fact that she was a woman. After a few letters, Lagrange was impressed. In fact, he wanted to meet this M. LeBlanc in person. Of course, this would blow her cover! But there was no way around it. Sophie reluctantly agreed. Fortunately, Lagrange wasn’t upset. He saw that Sophie was a talented, hard-working mathematician, He encouraged her to keep up her studies.

The type of math that Sophie was most interested in is called number theory. She had read a book about it by Adrien Marie Legendre, and was hooked. Number theory is all about finding patterns in numbers and seeing how they relate to each other. If you know that all even numbers can be divided by two, and odd numbers can’t, then you know something about number theory. Number theorists also study things like prime numbers, which can only be divided by themself and 1, and square numbers, which you get by multiplying any number by itself. 

Lagrange wasn’t Sophie’s only pen-pal. Later, she began writing to another famous mathematician, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Gauss had also worked on number theory. Again, Sophie used the pen name M. LeBlanc to disguise her gender. Gauss was also impressed with the work of “Monsieur LeBlanc,” and even raved to his friends about it. 

But Sophie became worried when she learned that Gauss was living in an area of Germany that was occupied by French soldiers. She wanted to make sure he was safe. She used her father’s connections to contact someone in the French army there, and a soldier was sent to check on Gauss. He was fine, but confused. He didn’t know why this mysterious young woman called Mademoiselle Germain would be concerned. He told the officer that he didn’t know anyone by that name!

Sophie later wrote to clear up his confusion, revealing that he knew the mysterious Mademoiselle Germain as “Monsieur Leblanc.”  Gauss, like Lagrange, was not angered by the revelation that the person he’d been writing turned out to be a femme-savant or “knowledgable woman.” He continued writing to Sophie, and gave her credit for inspiring some of his ideas in number theory.

Though Sophie had found some supporters in the math world, she still had few chances to prove to the wider world that she was just as capable as any male mathematician.  Finally, an opportunity arose when the Paris Academy of Sciences decided to put on a competition. A visiting professor named Ernst Chladni had recently put on an intriguing demonstration in Paris. He had sprinkled a layer of sand onto metal plates of many different shapes, then rubbed a violin bow across the edge of each plate. A different tone sounded from each plate, and the sand on the plates would jump and shift, making beautiful waves, whorls, and starbursts that were unique to each shape. 

The Academy asked mathematicians to explain what was happening using mathematical formulas. This was a hard problem, but like Archimedes, Sophie got to work, studying the patterns in the sand. She submitted her entry anonymously in 1811. She was the only entrant, so you might think she’d automatically get the prize. But some contests don’t have a winner. The judges decided her entry didn’t quite explain the problem well enough. 

The Academy re-opened the contest in 1813, giving Sophie a chance to show the progress she’d made. Again, she was the only entrant, and again no prize was awarded. But Sophie kept going, working on the problem, correcting the errors in her formulas, and experimenting with the metal plates. Luckily for her, the Academy had kept the contest going, and still no one else had entered! By this time, Sophie had been working on this problem for more than three years. She entered (again, the only person to do so) and finally won!

Even  though she’d won a prize for her work, and many male mathematicians praised her abilities, Sophie would never get a job as a mathematician. They simply weren’t available for women at the time. Some male mathematicians even used her work without giving her credit. But she continued to toil away at math for the rest of her life. She was able to publish a few papers, including one about her work on the metal plates. She worked on Fermat’s last theorem–a famous and very difficult math problem, finding new ways to solve parts of it. Adrien Legendre, whose book had drawn her to number theory, would give her credit for this work when he finally solved it.

Sophie even continued working on math after she discovered she had cancer in 1829. She continued working when revolution again broke out in France in 1830. She found a way until she finally passed away at home in 1831. 

Many people have paid tribute to Sophie in other ways though. Gauss asked the University of Gottingen to give her an honorary degree, though they didn’t grant it until 1837, after her death. Some of her work would turn out to be important in the design of the Eiffel Tower. There’s a street named after her in Paris, and, fittingly, later mathematicians named a new type of prime number after her. The Paris Academy of Sciences named an annual math prize after her, honoring the time and care she took in working on the contest she entered three times before she finally won. 

Sophie did not have the opportunities she deserved during her life. Though she was clearly talented, she might have been a much greater mathematician if others had taken her more seriously.  Still, Sophie helped change people’s minds about what women could do. She worked hard and refused to be ignored. Because of Sophie and other female scientists of her time, future generations of women could enter math and science as themselves. They no longer had to sign their letters with fake names, or hide under layers of blankets late at night to study. They were free to claim their own work and study near an open window, the sun shining on their faces.

Sources

https://byjus.com/maths/number-theory/

https://interestingengineering.com/7-amazing-inventions-from-archimedes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Germain

Campbell, Paul J; Grinstein, Louise S (1987) Women of Mathematics: A Bibliographic Source Book. Greenwood Press, New York.

The post History of Sophie Germain for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Has your curiosity ever gotten you in trouble? Maybe you took something apart or made a mess while you were trying to find out how it worked, or maybe you’ve asked a grown-up a question they didn’t know how to answer. If so, don’t feel bad about yourself! You have something in common with some of the smartest and most innovative people in history, including the subject of today’s episode, Grace Murray Hopper. 

Grace was born and raised in New York City, and she was a very curious child. Her family had a large summer home, which they shared with her many cousins. Each of the seven bedrooms in the house had an alarm clock, and every evening, Grace’s mother would set each alarm clock. This was the early twentieth century, so these weren’t the kind of alarm your parents might have on their phone, or even a digital alarm clock. These were old-fashioned clocks with gears in them and two bells on top. When the alarm rang, a small hammer would go back and forth, quickly hitting the bells and making a loud, high-pitched ring. This kind of ringing was impossible to sleep through! If you imagine what an old-fashioned fire alarm might sound like, it would be similar to that. 

Grace was fascinated by the alarm clocks, and wanted to know how they worked. So she took one apart! But looking at the pile of gears, springs, and hands, in front of her, she still wasn’t sure. 

So she took apart another. 

Then another. 

Eventually, Grace took apart all seven alarm clocks, trying to figure out how all the tiny, complicated pieces worked together. Her mother wasn’t exactly happy about all the alarm clocks in the house being broken, but she was understanding, and she let Grace keep one clock to study.

Grace’s father also supported Grace’s curiosity. He encouraged her and her sister to get as much education as they could so they could support themselves. This was not common for girls in the early 1900s. Grace especially loved math and geometry. She used geometry to draw pictures. This is a fun way to use math – try to see what you can draw some time just using the basic shapes like circles, squares, and triangles. If you look around, you’ll notice these shapes, along with angles, lines, curves, and other things that can be described with numbers, in many things you see every day.

Grace worked hard in school, and was almost able to start college when she was sixteen! Why almost? Her test scores in math were very high, but her scores in Latin were too low. But, just as she had done with the alarm clocks, Grace didn’t quit trying after one failure. She tried again, and was able to start college the next year at seventeen. She graduated with degrees in math and physics in 1928. She went on to get a PhD in math at Yale in 1934. Eventually, she became a math professor at Vassar College.

When World War II started, Grace tried to join the Navy, which had just started accepting women. Her grandfather had been in the Navy, and she wanted to follow in his footsteps. But the Navy wouldn’t take Grace! Their reasons for rejecting her were not what you might think: they said she was valuable to the war effort as a math professor; she was too thin for her height; and she was too old at 34. This shows us another important lesson: people often don’t say no to you because they don’t like you. They might say no because of rules they have to follow, or because you’re too important! Not a bad reason to be rejected, right?

But knowing Grace, you can probably guess that this rejection didn’t hold her back. She tried again. Grace took a leave of absence from her job as a professor and volunteered for the Naval Reserves. She had to get special permission due to her weight being too low, but she got to serve in the Navy and support the war effort, just like she wanted. Not only that, she was at the top of her class in the training program! The Navy sent her to Harvard University to work on the first computer made in the United States, the Mark I.

Grace worked on programming the Mark I to help the navy solve problems on their ships. Programming a computer means giving it instructions so it will do what you want it to do. You might be wondering why Grace was given a job programming computers. But, have you ever thought about why a computer is called a computer? Well, it’s because their original purpose was to compute things, to do complex math that humans can’t do quickly. The navy used the Mark I to help them track the location of enemy ships and submarines. It could perform math quickly, and never made mistakes like human mathematicians sometimes do. But, the Mark I did need humans to tell it exactly what math to do, and that was Grace’s job. 

Early computers were programmed using numbers and symbols. You had to understand a lot of mathematics to program a computer, which is why many early programmers like Grace, had degrees in math. Programming was complicated and it was easy to make mistakes, even for an expert. So Grace would save pieces of programs that did specific things so she could use them again in new programs. She also developed a system that allowed the computer to find these pieces of code without her having to input all of it again.

After the war, in 1949, Grace went to work at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. Here, she worked on Univac, the first computer in the United States to be sold to businesses for general purposes. This got her thinking about what people were trying to do with computers, and she realized not everyone could get their job done using only the language of math, numbers and symbols. Grace thought there should be computer programming languages that were based on the English language. This would make it easier for more people to learn to program and use computers to help them do their jobs. But, in order to create this kind of programming language, she also needed to invent the technology to translate English-based commands into the mathematical language that computers understood.

And that’s exactly what Grace did! She called her translator a compiler. If you want to imagine what a compiler does, think of all the word problems you’ve seen in your math books. You might have a problem like:

“Dan has seven apples. He gives three of them to Isaac. How many apples does Dan have left?”

The English words in this sentence give us clues about what kind of math problem we need to do. We know that the special words seven and three are numbers. We know if someone gives something away, they will have fewer of that thing. This gives us a clue that we need to subtract to find the answer. Once we think it through a bit, we can figure out that we need to write a math problem, “seven minus three equals” and then compute the answer. A compiler does something similar: it has a set of rules it uses to take the commands and translate them into numbers. The rules are more complicated than the subtraction word problem we just talked about, but the idea is similar.   

At first, the men Grace worked with thought this idea was crazy. But she kept working on her ideas for years, and eventually, others who worked with computers accepted them. Grace also reached her goal of inventing the first programming language based on English words, rather than numbers and symbols. This new language became known as COBOL. It was used for decades, and is even still used today. More importantly, COBOL inspired many other computer scientists to invent new programming languages based on human language to solve different types of problems. Today there are dozens of languages, and millions of people who learn and use them everyday. 

Later Grace returned to working for the Navy. After a long career, she reached the rank of rear admiral. At the time, she was one of the highest ranking women in the Navy. She retired in 1986 at the age of 80, but even after retiring, she continued to work. She was always eager to help young people learn about computers and programming, and aside from inventing the compiler, she said this was one of her greatest accomplishments.

Grace used to have a clock on her office wall. It was the kind of clock with hands that tick off the hours, seconds and minutes, just like the alarm clocks she took apart as a child. But this clock was unique: its hands went around in the opposite direction from other clocks. Instead of going clockwise, her clock went counter-clockwise! Even though the clock went backwards, it still ticked off the hours and minutes reliably, and gave the right time. 

Grace said this clock was a reminder that you don’t have to do things the same way everyone else is doing them. If you think you have a different or better way to do something, you should try it, even if others don’t understand at first. And as she showed so many times in her life, don’t just try once. Try over and over again until you get it! If you have a good idea and work hard to make it a reality, other people will eventually notice. 

Grace never gave up when she had a goal or a  great idea, even when others around her didn’t support her. She kept working on her ideas, and showing her work to others, until they had to listen, and, often, had to admit she’d been right all along! She knew that good ideas didn’t always fit the way people had done things in the past. They might even seem a little crazy at first. But without crazy new ideas we wouldn’t make any progress.

Sources

https://stories.vassar.edu/2017/assets/images/170706-legacy-of-grace-hopper-hopperpdf.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

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Close your eyes and imagine a short man with gray and white hair that sticks up off his head and grows in all directions. He has a big mustache and wears a coat that is rumpled, pants that are short, and socks that don’t match. But he has a kind smile on his face and deep, thoughtful eyes. This is what Albert Einstein looked like. And it might be easy to judge him by his funny appearance, but Einstein is one of the most famous scientists of all time. And many of his big ideas changed the world! But where did Albert Einstein come from? What was his childhood like? What was his life like? Listen closely, because it all starts in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879 when Albert was born.

Albert was quiet and very shy as a child. It took him longer to say his first words than most kids. His parents thought this meant there was something wrong with him. They took him to the doctor, but the doctor said everything was just fine. As a child, Albert liked to play by himself. He played with blocks and built towers of cards. He was very curious and often sat and just day-dreamed. His parents thought this meant he had some kind of problem, but really he just liked to sit and think and dream and make things on his own. 

Albert also liked the play the violin. Often he and his mother played together. Albert’s mind was always imagining and wondering about the world around him. He went to school, but wasn’t learning the things that interested him, so he started searching for answers on his own. He read and found many of his answers in books and by asking others. His parents began to see how curious and bright he was and appreciate his talents, even though he was quiet and shy. 

In high school, Albert struggled in school. Kids had to sit perfectly still, wear uniforms, and march in line. If they asked questions they were punished. His teachers told his parents he’d never do anything useful in life because he was so disobedient by asking questions and speaking out of turn. These years were very frustrating for Albert, because he was curious and wanted to learn. Math was one of his favorite subjects. His parents found a book about geometry, the study of shapes, and he taught it to himself. 

Eventually, Albert was told to leave his school, because he refused to stop asking questions and wouldn’t blindly obey his teachers. He moved with his family to Italy and there spent his time hiking in the mountains and learning on his own. He read about great scientists and astronomers like Copernicus and Galileo who had great ideas. But because their ideas were different than what was believed, they were treated poorly. Albert understood these scientists because he felt he was being treated the same way. In Italy, he wrote his first scientific paper, but it received very little attention because he was young and no one thought someone his age would have great ideas. In Italy, he decided to move to Zurich Switzerland to study physics.

There he loved the Swiss people and his new college. He was able to ask tough questions and talk about them with his classmates. There he met a woman named Mileva who was also a big thinker. They enjoyed their time together and were later married. 

In Switzerland, Albert started working at the patent office. When someone comes up with an idea for a new invention, they draw up the plans and get a patent — which means no one else can take their idea. Albert’s job was to read about all of the new inventions and approve them. He enjoyed this job and was able to work so fast that he could take off early and spend time hiking and thinking. These were some of Albert’s happiest years of his life. So many marvelous ideas came to him at this time. He started writing scientific papers about his ideas and published five of them. These included big ideas about space travel and electricity. Albert was known for wearing the same wrinkled clothes every day and didn’t comb his hair, so it stuck up all over the place. He liked to spend time deep in thought rather than taking care of himself. People began to know him for his big ideas and recognized him for his funny appearance.

As Albert became more popular, he finally got his dream job — teaching physics for the university. Now he was able to spend all of his time thinking and teaching his students. The students loved their quirky professor. He was able to take difficult ideas and explain them in a simple way.

One of his big ideas was called The Theory of Relativity. This idea was that all things move at different speeds except for light. Think about how as a car passes it’s moving at a different speed as it drives by. But if you’re inside the car it doesn’t appear to be moving at all. So speed is “relative” to where you are. Another example is that the Earth is flying around the sun and spinning at incredible speeds, but because you’re standing on the Earth it doesn’t appear to be moving at all.

 Another of Einstein’s big idea was that not only are the planets moving around the Sun, but the Sun is moving through the galaxy as well, it just doesn’t appear to move because our planet is moving around it.

Some funny things about Albert is that even though he was a scientific genius he was often absent-minded, which means he forgot simple things. For example, often when he went out he forgot his keys, lost his bags, and forgot to eat. He was so focused on what went on in his wonderful brain that he often didn’t consider what was going on around him. He found simpler ways to live his life, so he could focus all his energy on thinking. For example, he wore the same clothes every day and only buttoned his top button because it took less time and energy. He often wore socks that didn’t match, his clothes were rumpled and his hair stuck all over the place. But his fans loved it and people all over the world talked about this brilliant, quirky genius.

Albert’s next job took him back to Germany, but over the years he and his wife were growing apart. He was so busy being a professor and speaking around the world that he didn’t give Mileva and his children the time they needed. Mileva decided not to move him and they divorced. Albert admitted he was not always a good father and chose writing his papers and teaching over his family responsibilities. 

While Albert was living in Germany, World War I started. He was sad to see soldiers marching down the street because he knew what war did to people. He refused to support the war and the leaders of Germany were upset at him. He could have gone to jail, but he stood up for his beliefs anyway. When World War I ended Albert was very happy.

In Germany, Albert met a woman named Elsa. They grew close and she spent her time taking care of him, making sure he ate and shaved and didn’t lose his keys. They were married. Albert loved Elsa and she loved him. 

By this time, Albert was so popular it made his life difficult. You might think being popular is a great thing, but for people who are very famous, you can’t walk anywhere without people talking to you or wanting a picture or asking for your autograph. Albert loved being alone, so this was very hard for him. He was offered a lot of money to speak and do other things, but he refused. For him, his research and his ideas were more important than money or fame.

Sadly, new problems began in Germany. Albert Einstein was Jewish, which is a race and religion. Many Jews who lived in Germany wrote to Albert and asked him to defend them because they were being treated badly. Their shops were taken from them and they were often beaten up by non-Jews. The Nazis, who had taken control of Germany, falsely blamed all their problems on the Jewish people. They burned their books and many Jews started leaving Germany. Albert spoke out against the Nazis and refused to leave even though his life was at risk. Hitler, the powerful leader of the Nazis, said Albert was a spy and eventually Albert realized it was too dangerous for him to stay. He and Elsa moved to the United States and became a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey. 

Albert’s years at Princeton were hard. He was sad to see what was happening to Jews in Germany. Then sadly Elsa died. Albert often kept to himself and played his violin. He also didn’t have as many big ideas as when he was younger.

One of Albert’s most famous ideas was an equation, E = MC2. It basically said that all things are energy. Even the hard walls around you, your body, mass are energy, too, but just in a different form. He also had the idea that if an atom could be broken it would cause a HUGE explosion, called a nuclear explosion. He worried that the Nazis might create a nuclear bomb and use it against the United States and her Allies. Even though he hated the idea that such a weapon would ever be used, he wrote President Roosevelt and told him that the United States must create the bomb first. Eventually, the United States did create an atomic bomb and used it against its enemy Japan. For the rest of his life, Albert wondered whether he should have ever shared his ideas about a nuclear bomb. But he also thought the consequence of the Nazis making it first would be even worse. 

After World War II ended, Einstein spent many years speaking out against atomic bombs. The United States and Russia had made thousands of them and it made the world a very dangerous place. Fortunately, after World War II nuclear bombs were never used. 

Albert Einstein spent the last years of his life growing old while living in Princeton, New Jersey. His hair was now white and grew widely in all directions. He was still a quirky and funny sight to see with his rumpled, mismatched clothes. He continued to play his violin and go on walks around his home. He often stopped to help people in need or invite them into his home. He was a very gentle, kind person who had changed the world with his ideas but didn’t care about money or being famous. He just wanted the world to be a peaceful place. On April 17, 1955 Einstein passed away while thinking through a problem and writing equations on a piece of paper. To his last day, he was a thinker! 

Spend a moment thinking about what it was like to be Albert. When he was young he loved to go on walks and observe the world around him. He saw everything through the eyes of wonder and curiosity. The world to him was an exciting, mysterious place. He loved to understand how it worked and dream about how the parts he didn’t understand might work. His imagination led to some of his amazing ideas. You can wonder, too. Remember in the times when you might be bored, it’s ok to be bored. Say it out loud “it’s ok to bored!” When you’re bored, you can take a deep breath and look closely at the world around you. It’s the perfect chance to see things with new eyes. 

Even though Einstein became very famous, he didn’t care about having lots of money and expensive things. He wanted the world to be fair and peaceful. He also wasn’t perfect. No one really is. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. Einstein wasn’t a very good father, but he ended up helping the world in many other ways. 

If you want to learn more about Albert Einstein we shared our favorite videos and books on our website, BedtimeHistoryStories.com. Be sure to check it out.

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