Because the mathematician and computer scientist Ada Lovelace did her work at a time when mesmerism was popular, both mesmerism and the ideas that sparked its popularity had a significant influence on Lovelace’s conceptions of her role as a scientist and on the substance on her work as well. Women in Victorian England were often subject to the belief that they were incapable of true intellectual thought because of inherent differences between their bodies and minds and those of men. For instance, it was commonly thought that women had extremely creative minds, which meant that they could not analyze evidence accurately and therefore could not become intellectuals. However, the supposed creativity of women’s minds resulted in the image of …show more content…
Mesmerism made women into so-called priestesses or oracles, agreeing with the belief of the time that women were inherently creative and imaginative. It was very unusual in the Victorian period for women to be scientists or mathematicians because of the perceived differences between the minds of men and women, and so the rare women who were prominent intellectuals were thought of as having some kind of genius, or special power, similar to the fashionable ideal of the prophetess. Lovelace even thought of herself as having powers like these, and this idea was able to validate her contributions to computer science to those who thought that women were intellectually incapable of making scientific discoveries. The idea of the creative female mind also ended up making Lovelace’s work focus on the creative aspects of computer science rather than the more mechanical aspects. Although Ada Lovelace made many important scientific discoveries, she was still subject to the restrictive 19th century views on women, and this affected her work and put her on the path to making some of her most famous contributions to computer