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Three Brilliant Byrons: a Poet, a Mathematician, and a Programmer
The only good thing to come out of Lord Byron’s disastrous marriage to Anne Milbanke was the incomparable Ada Lovelace
The specter of her father’s genius dominated her life, while her mother, a genius of a different sort, was determined to eradicate any tendency she had to emulate him. But Ada Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron and mathematician Anne Milbanke charted her own course between the rocky shoals of her turbulent heredity. She didn’t see poetry and mathematics as the enemies her parents were to each other but as collaborators in something new and altogether different.
A history of mental illness
“In the case of Lord Byron, the clinical hallmark of manic-depressive illness is its recurrent, episodic nature, which Byron had in an almost textbook manner. Byron also had a family history remarkable for its suicide in itself more likely to be associated with bipolar disorder than with any other condition.” — Ahmed Hankir, “Bipolar Disorder and Poetic Genius”
