Celebrate Ada Lovelace -- and all women in STEM

     The second Tuesday in October -- this year, Tuesday, October 10 -- is Ada Lovelace Day..  Details of the celebration planned by The Royal Institution of Science are available here at this link.  A careful biography of this pioneering female mathematician -- Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) -- is available here.

"Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) is an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). It aims to increase the profile of women in STEM and, in doing so, create new role models who will encourage more girls into STEM careers and support women already working in STEM."  Quote from https://findingada.com/.

Although her father, poet Lord Byron, had no interest in mathematics, Ada's mother, Lady Byron, was supportive as was astronomer-mathematician Mary Somerville (1780-1872) -- who became a longtime friend and math-encourager. (Lots more details of Lovelace's math-life are available here at the St Andrews Math-History website and her pioneering work with the Analytical Engine is featured here.)

      Below is a poem by Twitter poet Brian Bilston (@brian_bilston) that celebrates Ada Lovelace.

Poetry on Twitter

      Dubbed the "unofficial poet laureate of Twitter" Brian Bilston (a pen-name) sometimes uses mathematics to shape his poems; for example, this poem whose word-counts follow the Fibonacci numbers:

from "Brian Bilston's  POETRY LABOETRY"

Look for Brian on Twitter (@brian_bilston) 

and also on Facebook (www.facebook.com/BrianBilston/).

Links and comments for many of my blog-posts also on twitter on Twitter  @mathypoems

and a search using the hash-tag #NPRpoetry leads to lots of interesting stuff!

A Christmas-tree poem

As I enjoy the brightness that Christmas tree lights bring to a grey day, I am reminded of the following poem by Brian Bilston, found on Twitter (X) early in December:

Previous mentions of Brian Bilston in this blog may be found at this link.

Venn Diagram Poem

     One of my granddaughters has been working with Venn diagrams in her middle school math class.  And my thoughts turned to this poem -- back in 2018, Twitter poet Brian Bilston (@brian_bilston) celebrated the August 4 birthday of the diagram's inventor, logician John Venn (1834-1923), with this clever poem in a Venn diagram.

Lots more of Brian's poetry adventures can be found here at his website.

Happy Fibonacci Day!

        Today, November 23 is Fibonacci Day . . . How are you celebrating?  Twitter poet Brian Bilston (@Brian_Bilston) has posted a Fibonacci poem -- with words-per-line counted by the Fibonacci numbers.  Here are its opening lines:

       I
       wrote
       a poem
       in a tweet
       but then each line grew
       to the word sum of the previous two
       until . . .

Use of the Fibonacci numbers in poetry has gotten frequent mention in this blog; here is a link to the results of a blog SEARCH using the term Fibonacci.  And find the rest of Brian's poem in this posting from August 31, 2020 -- or by browsing here on Twitter.