In 1965, while computers still filled entire rooms and women were often discouraged from entering technical fields, a Catholic nun quietly made history.

Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, born in 1913 and a member of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, devoted her life to education. Trained in mathematics and physics, she pursued the emerging field of computer science when the discipline itself was still new.

On June 7, 1965, she became the first woman in the United States to earn a PhD in computer science, and one of the first people overall to receive the degree. During her studies, she was granted rare access to Dartmouth College’s computer center, where she worked alongside early computing pioneers during the era when the BASIC programming language was being developed. She later became a leading educator and advocate for making computing accessible to students and non-experts.

Keller went on to found and lead the computer science department at Clarke College (now Clarke University) and spent decades promoting computer education and inclusion. She believed technology should serve humanity, not intimidate it—and her quiet legacy helped shape the digital world we now take for granted.