U.S. Army Master Sergeant Robert McLaughlin's obsession with Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace paid off when he found an original watercolor of the young noble, daughter of the poet Lord Byron, for sale on eBay. Widely credited with having created the first computer program, a system of calculating Bernoulli numbers for Charles Babbage's steam-powered Analytical Engine, "The Enchantress of Number" is a dashingly romantic figure. She's made numerous appearances in novels, including steampunk ur-text The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

Depicted in the portrait as a charming toddler, she grew into quite the Lady before being bled to death by her doctors at age 36. The amount and nature of her contribution to computing is controversial, with rumors attributing her with everything from substance abuse and gambling to manic depression and delusions of grandeur. Which tells me not much has changed in the developer community over the past two centuries.