A Catholic nun was the first U.S. woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science.

Science & Industry

A lthough computer science goes back to the 19th century, the academic field really came into its own in the early 1960s. The first United States graduates with advanced computer science degrees emerged in the middle of that decade, and the first two Ph.D. candidates graduated on the same day (from different schools) on June 7, 1965. One of the graduates was not only the first U.S. woman to earn a Ph.D. in the field, but also a nun: Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, who earned her degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (The other candidate was Irving Tang of Washington University in St. Louis.)

Keller was born Evelyn Keller, and her name was changed to Mary Kenneth after she took her vows with the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) in 1933 at age 19. She was assigned to teach elementary and high school for the next 29 years, so she earned her academic degrees slowly so as not to interfere with her duties. She graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor's degree in mathematical sciences in 1943 and a master's in mathematics in 1952.

Keller was working as a high school math teacher in Chicago when she took her first computer workshop in 1961. "I just went out to look at a computer one day," she told religious publication The Witness, "and I never came back." By delegating mundane tasks to computers, Keller said, people could "aspire to higher levels of thinking." After graduation, she founded the computer science department at Clarke University, a college founded by the BVM in Dubuque, Iowa. She also taught adult computer classes on the side, including tutoring the famed architect Buckminster Fuller, and helped develop educational modules for BASIC programming.

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By the Numbers

Year Purdue University founded the first U.S. computer science degree program

1962

Percentage the U.S. nun population declined between 1965 and 2014

72%

Did you know?

An escaped Renaissance nun lived her life as a swashbuckling man.

Soon after Spanish Basque nun Catalina de Erauso, born in the late 16th century, escaped her convent at age 15, she sewed her first set of men's clothing from her own habit. She lived the rest of her life under multiple assumed male identities, eventually settling on Antonio de Erauso. During her many adventures, she killed seven people (including her own brother), took women as lovers, worked as a soldier in Latin America, and had multiple run-ins with the law, including avoiding two death sentences. After disclosing her story to a bishop in 1623, she became an international celebrity.

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