ALD News: Organise your own event to watch our livestream on 10 October
Plus, new Ada Lovelace book for English learners, and lots of interesting links!
Hi there,
We are just two months away from our first in-person Ada Lovelace Day Live event in four years and our excitement is mounting! But don’t worry if you’re not near London – we have a way for you to enjoy the event too.
Hold your own ALD Live watch party!
We will be livestreaming the entire Ada Lovelace Day Live performance, so if you’d like to watch at home, at work, or at your own indie event, then tickets start at £5.73 for non-members of the Royal Institution and can be booked individually or in groups.
So why not invite friends, family, colleagues or your local women in STEM community to get together to watch? We’ve had lots of different types of events held around the world in previous years, but for those of you in a timezone that overlaps with the UK evening, this is the first time you’ll be able to watch live.
If you do organise an event, please let us know by adding it to our map, and we’ll give you a shout-out as we open the event, as well as promote it in our newsletter and on social media.
The live performance is scheduled to kick off at about 19:30 London time, which will be these times around the world:
Wednesday 11 October
Sydney, Australia: 05:30
Auckland, NZ: 07:30
Mumbai, India: 00:00
Tuesday 10 October
Bucharest, Romania: 21:30
Paris, France: 20:30
Reykjavik, Iceland: 18:30
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 15:30
New York, USA: 14:30
San Francisco, USA: 11:30
Anchorage, USA: 10:30
Honolulu, USA: 08:30
We hope you’ll join us!
New Ada Lovelace graded reader
Author and English teacher Angela Hill has published a graded reader telling Ada Lovelace’s story which is out now from Delta Publishing.
A graded reader is a short book aimed at teens and adults who are learning English as a second language. The book includes a glossary and various comprehension and language activities to help the reader improve their English.
“Researching it was great fun,” said Angela in an email. “I went down so many fascinating rabbit holes with the cast of characters and have definitely become an Ada fangirl.”
Ada on her own is a fascinating character - a visionary woman trying to make a name for herself in the field of science in patriarchal Victorian Britain – but add into the mix the toxic relationship between her infamous father, Lord Byron, and her much more staid, and yet equally impressive mother, Lady Byron, plus the somewhat eccentric personality of Mr Charles Babbage and his ever growing and never to be finished Engines and you have all the ingredients you need for a story and a very long sentence.
Ada’s story also offers up rabbit holes galore to go down – Charles Babbage’s relentless campaign against London organ grinders, the whereabouts of his brain (in two separate locations), unemployed hairdressers in post-revolutionary France working as human computers, a roller-blading inventor with the name of a wizard who created some of most ingenious automata of his time, including the Silver Swan at The Bowes Museum, as well as Luddites and laudanum.
Weekly posts on Substack
Over the last month, we’ve posted some fascinating stories of women in STEM, as well as links to a podcast and a book, as part of our weekly email. If you’re not getting these emails direct to your inbox, just log in to Substack, visit your Manage Subscription page, scroll down to Notifications and turn the emails on by making sure the toggle switch shows green!
Meantime, you can catch up here:
Looking Glass: Climate Solutions, Gemma Milne. How can physics help us address the climate crisis?
Dr Rukhmabai Raut, Physician. Rukhmabai Raut was the second woman to become a practising physician in India.
Prof Maryna Viazovska, Mathematician. Maryna Viazovska is a mathematician known for her work in sphere packing and only the second woman to win the Fields Medal.
Superior, Angela Saini. Angela Saini explores the persistent belief in biological racial differences and reminds us that we are all biologically more alike than different.
Around the web
Here is our round up of links and reading that we’ve found interesting this month!
Ada Lovelace featured: Ada Lovelace has been honoured on a commemorative coin from the Royal Mint! The new coin is part of the Royal Mint’s Innovation in Science collection.
Women of colour: Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute is featuring scientists working in conservation, including Juliana Vélez Gómez, who writes about her work and why mentoring women in science is important. And herCircle features Ritu Karidhal Srivastava, a senior scientist at the Indian Space Research organization (ISRO), and part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission team. Frontline profiles the Indian women who are part of the Antarctic mission, including ongoing measurements of the Dalk Glacier. In the UK, the Independent profiles Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon on her experiences and underrepresentation of women in tech.
News: The Rosalind Franklin Society (RFS) Awards winners for 2022 have been announced! Award winning women and minorities in science have a biography and abstract of their work published in an anthology which is available to read on the RFS site. Salty Science is a group of four female marine scientists who are taking part in World’s Toughest Row across the Atlantic ocean, raising money for ocean conservation. Did you know that two Barbie dolls went to space? They were part of Mission DreamStar and you can now view the dolls at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Watarah is a new robot taking part in the University Rover Challenge - and it is also bright pink! It has been designed to get people talking about the representation of women in robotics, according to Nature.
Videos and podcasts: The film Oppenheimer has recently been released to great acclaim, but what about the women who worked on the Manhattan Project? The Lost Women of Science podcast investigates.
Book: Astrobiologist Dr Aomawa Shields has released a memoir about her work, her acting and being a woman of colour in astronomy, called Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe, and is interviewed for Wired. And physicist Prof Dame Athene Donald has written a book about the issues women in STEM face, Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science. The Smithsonian has put together a list of books on women scientists for students.
That’s it for now! We look forward to hearing all about the Ada Lovelace Day events you’ve got planned for this year, so don’t forget to add them to our map.
Best regards,
Suw & the ALD team