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The first woman PhD in computer science was a nun (2013)

161 points| jaoued | 5 years ago |mentalfloss.com

65 comments

order

jkingsbery|5 years ago

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kenneth_Keller and https://www.cs.wisc.edu/2019/03/18/2759/, she is also tied for being the first American to receive a PhD in computer science (one other person received his PhD on the same exact day). They are also potentially (it seems there's some debate) the first CS PhDs (https://studylib.net/doc/8193211/who-earned-first-computer-s...).

Great line from that last link: "Prior to 1965 ... there were none, and after 1965 there was a nun."

chx|5 years ago

Erm, no.

The first woman to get a PhD in computer science was a Wren, not a nun: Beatrice Worsley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Worsley of note

> When World War II ended, Worsley was the only Wren at the NRE to choose to remain in service.

She is tragically forgotten despite she wrote the first program to run on a Von Neumann architecture computer (that being the EDSAC) which you could simplify to say she wrote the first computer program as we today understand such.

Also, she got the first PhD in CS when CS wasn't even a thing yet.

dhosek|5 years ago

To be more precise, she was a sister. A nun would be a woman consecrated to religious life who lives cloistered. While "nun" is used colloquially to refer to all women religious, the technical meaning is narrower.

As many other commenters have noted, there is a culture of many women religious receiving advanced degrees. One of my college friends who got his PhD in political science at MIT was surprised to discover that there were two women religious in his grad school cohort.

In parallel terms, "monk" and "brother" are often used interchangeably, but like with nun, a monk lives cloistered. A brother is a non-ordained man consecrated to religious life. While many brothers are monks, many monks are priests, and some brothers live non-cloistered lives, in the sciences, perhaps the best known would be Brother Guy Consolmagno who is a Jesuit brother and the Vatican astronomer.

sangnoir|5 years ago

I'd argue the best known monk in the sciences is Gregor Mendel , who was an Augustinian friar and genetics research pioneer.

As an aside, it always rubs me the wrong way when people insinuate the (Catholic) church is anti-science when the long list of contributions to science says otherwise.

starpilot|5 years ago

When I was in college in engineering, I noticed a woman dressed in a sister's outfit always in the labs, I think she was studying EE? She was running PSpice. Very interesting.

wefarrell|5 years ago

My great aunt who is a nun got a masters in Chemistry in the 1950s. She said that the only other women in her program were nuns.

doorstar|5 years ago

Karen Armstrong ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Armstrong ) said in her memoirs that when she turned 18 in 1962 she knew she didn't want to be a wife and mother, so she figured that she must have been "called" to become a nun.

It is hard to overstate the social pressure women were under to discard any life goals besides "motherhood" for a long time. My MIL has a math degree but knew full well that she might as well put in in the shredder once she got married. It's still kind of a painful subject for her honestly.

vanderZwan|5 years ago

It's not really surprising, is it? In a society that demands of women to get married and raise kids instead of work, it's mostly women who aren't allowed to marry and have kids who get to do things like follow a higher education.

jdtang13|5 years ago

Okay. Now, where are the details about her religious life? What did she believe in and care about? It was obviously very important to her, to the extent that she made serious monastic vows. When a movie actor is a life-long alcoholic, we happily include that in the biography; but when we are speaking about Catholic sisters, we whitewash it away from their lives? Pretty disappointing considering that the headline is "[she] was a nun".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisters_of_Charity_of_the_Bles...

jvandonsel|5 years ago

"Dartmouth relaxed the rule barring women from its computer center..."

Just wow.

PeterStuer|5 years ago

According to Wikipedia Dartmouth College was a male only college until 1972.

Woman did work as employees at the computer center, and bringing dates from nearby schools and colleges to the computing center was apparently a thing as students liked to show off their computer skills.

Also of note: unlike other colleges, students at Dartmouth didn't need to pay for computer time, creating both opportunity but potentially also the need to 'guard' against outsiders.

6510|5 years ago

I've been working at a joke about men creating languages and parallel processing but that's a story for a different thread.

mattkevan|5 years ago

There’s also Sister Catherine Wybourne, AKA The Digital Nun.

She’s a web and app developer and new media pioneer - and her monastery’s primary income comes through development and consulting services.

I went to a talk of hers on social media years ago and it was excellent.

“Being cloistered doesn't mean that you have to have an enclosed mind, or an enclosed approach to things.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11511596/Meet-...

ppg677|5 years ago

Not just first "woman" PhD, but tied for first Computer Science PhD (in the U.S.).

jarmitage|5 years ago

I hereby rename NaN to Nun in her honour

6510|5 years ago

The first woman PhD in Computer Science was Sister Mary Kenneth Keller

coldcode|5 years ago

Making a lifetime vow does not mean you turn your brain off. The Belgian priest, Georges Lemaître, first proposed the theory that is now known as the Big Bang and made other discoveries in astronomy and physics, and still served as a priest as well.

GuB-42|5 years ago

In fact I'd say it is quite the opposite.

Let's not forget that clergy was originally a ruling class, and as such, had access to higher education and enough time to think and do research. And even today, with a few exceptions, they are far from being brainwashed cultists.

Not only they have a better than average level of scientific education, they also have a surprisingly open mind. Fitting for people who spend a good part of their life studying, even if most of it is about the Bible.

vulcan01|5 years ago

Gregor Mendel was a monk who established many of the rules of heredity (Mendelian inheritance).

protomyth|5 years ago

A service program I was associated with in the 90's had a government requirement that all social workers had their actions signed off my someone with a Masters in Social Work. That person was a Nun. It was amazing how many of the people we needed to provide the expertise to run those programs were Nuns.

HarryHirsch|5 years ago

Let's not forget the Jesuit missionaries who instrumental in the cultural exchange between the West and the peoples they sought to preach the Gospel to. Matteo Ricci is one celebrated figure, the missionaries that went to the First Nations in North America were others.

raxxorrax|5 years ago

Blaise Pascal is another example. Heard he did something with all kinds of triangles.

He was quite invasive with his faith though.

caycep|5 years ago

i figure taking vows gives you the mental space to devote your time to academic (read contemplative) pursuits. I assume most spend their time thinking through the philosophies of divinity but science is certainly an area of philosophy that is worth their time...

pdubs1|5 years ago

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azmarks|5 years ago

No wonder we start counting at zero, it all started with a nun.

skohan|5 years ago

Nikola Tesla and Isaac Newton were virgins as well. It might be argued that a certain level of unresolved frustration can be a driving force in technical pursuits...