Ada Lovelace[]
Had to do a page for my fav (in case you couldn't tell from the username!)
Nicknames: The Enchantress of Numbers, Princess of Parallelograms
Family Ties: Daughter of famous poet (George) Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke, Lady Wentworth, who was a mathematician. Her parents didn't get along; Byron left his wife shortly after Ada was born (though he did write a poem about her!), so Anne pushed her daughter to pursue math & science instead of following after her father.
Ada married William King-Noel in 1835, and when he became the Earl of Lovelace 3 years later, she became the Countess of Lovelace.
Education & Achievements: Ada worked as a mathematics tutor and did advanced study with Mary Somerville, who introduced her to Charles Babbage. Babbage & Lovelace became friends and working partners. He invited her to see the prototype for his Difference Engine, but she became most famous for her notes on his next project, the Analytical Engine. Ada spent nine months translating mathematician Luigi Menabrae's article on the Analytical Engine, and added notes three times as long as the article itself explaining things like the sequence of steps the Engine would take to calculate the Bernoulli numbers. This sequence is widely regarded as the first computer program.
Ada didn't just care about science, though, despite her mother's efforts. She saw connections between the arts and the sciences, and once asked her mother, "If you can't give me poetry, can't you at least give me poetical science?"
Contributions to the Tessera: Ada volunteered her home of Horsley Towers as the secret hiding place for the headquarters of the Tessera. She knew it would stay safe because her husband drew up such wacky plans for renovating the place, it was easy to add a door that no one would notice.
She spent so much time and effort in trying to protect the Tessera against S that she kept inhabiting the tower even after she died of cancer! She's now the guide for all the new Tessera members trying to get into the Towers.
Secret Tessera Fact: Charles Dickens foreshadowed Ada's haunting!