SISTER MARY KENNETH KELLER

Sister code
Founding Chair and Professor of Computer Science, Clarke Univeristy, Doctor of philosophy in Computer Science

Sister Mary Kenneth Keller broke every rule in the book, As the first woman to earn a PhD in Computer Science in the United States, she infiltarated the all-male Dartmouth computer lab in 1961 to help develop BASIC programming language - the code that would democratise computing forever. Born Evelyn Marie Keller, she traded her birth name for religious vows and spent decades teaching elementary school before pursuing her revolutionary computer science doctorate at age 51. She envisioned computers as educational tools when most saw them as mathmatical curiosities predicting they would become “the hib of tomorrows libraries” and championing universal access to information. 

Birth:
1913 - 1985 

Nationality:
American 

Career Path:
Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Vows taken 1940)

Phd in Computer Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison (1965) 

Founded computer science department at Clarker college (1965 - 1985)