- 27 May, 2025
May 26, 2025
When you think of the pioneers of computer science, names like Alan Turing or John von Neumann might come to mind. But among the early trailblazers of the digital revolution stands an unlikely figure in a religious habit: Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, a Catholic nun who broke barriers, built computer science programmes from the ground up, and believed deeply in the power of technology to transform lives.
Early Years
Born Evelyn Marie Keller on December 17, 1913, in Cleveland, Ohio, she entered the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1932 and took her final vows in 1940. While her spiritual path was rooted in tradition, her intellectual journey was anything but conventional.
Her Academic Pursuits
In an era when women, let alone nuns, were rarely seen in scientific circles, Sister Keller pursued rigorous academic training. She earned her B.S. in Mathematics in 1943 and followed it with an M.S. in Mathematics and Physics in 1953, both from DePaul University. Her passion for the intersection of logic, language, and learning led her to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she became one of the first two people in the U.S.—and the first woman—to earn a Ph.D. in computer science in 1965.
Her groundbreaking dissertation, Inductive Inference on Computer Generated Patterns, focused on "constructing algorithms that performed analytic differentiation on algebraic expressions, written in CDC FORTRAN 63."
Gaining Expertise in BASIC
Sister Keller was a hands-on educator who believed in democratising access to knowledge. In 1961, she joined a summer workshop at Dartmouth College, where she worked alongside Thomas Kurtz, the father of the BASIC programming language—a language designed to make programming accessible to students and non-specialists. Keller became a proficient teacher of BASIC and co-wrote a prominent textbook on the subject in 1973.
Her Achievements
Keller believed in the potential for computers to increase access to information and promote education. Shortly after earning her doctorate, she founded the computer science department at Clarke College (now Clarke University) in Dubuque, Iowa—a small Catholic women’s college. One of the first computer science departments at a small college, Keller went on to direct this department for twenty years.
Sister Keller saw the computer not as a cold machine but as a “great interdisciplinary tool” that could serve education, social justice, and human development. She strongly advocated for the involvement of women in computing and the use of computers for education. She helped to establish the Association of Small Computer Users in Education (ASCUE) and tirelessly promoted computer literacy at a time when few women—and even fewer religious sisters—were visible in the tech world.
At the ACM/SIGUCC User Services Conference in 1975, Keller declared, "We have not fully used a computer as the greatest interdisciplinary tool that has been invented to date." That insight rings even truer today, in a world where computers connect billions and influence every aspect of life.
Death
Sister Mary Kenneth Keller passed away in 1985 at the age of 71. Clarke University honoured her legacy with the Keller Computer Centre and a scholarship bearing her name.
In a world that often separates the sacred from the scientific, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller was a shining example of integration—a nun who believed that serving God included serving humanity through innovation. She didn’t just teach computers to think. She taught us to think bigger.
Source: Wikipedia
Image Credit: By Unknown - [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75991294
“Faith in Action” highlights inspiring stories of Catholic priests and nuns who have made remarkable contributions in fields like science, law, and technology. These individuals have pioneered inventions, developed cures, and impacted lives beyond the church. Know someone deserving of recognition? Contact editor@catholicconnect.in.
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