#Mathematics

She wrote the world's first computer program in 1843 — but what did it actually say? We go deep into the mathematics of Ada Lovelace's Notes on the Analytical Engine, what the Bernoulli number algorithm actually did, and why the ideas buried in those footnotes were more radical than even most computer scientists realise.

He invented cybernetics, the science of communication and control in machines and animals. He warned the world about automation destroying human labour — in 1950. He predicted the ethical crises of AI before the field had a name. And almost nobody listened. The forgotten genius who saw everything coming.

In 1948 a Bell Labs engineer published a paper that invented information theory and gave the entire digital age its mathematical foundation. He then spent his later years building juggling robots, riding a unicycle through the corridors, and playing chess against early computers. The remarkable, playful, essential life of Claude Shannon.