Sr. Mary Keller

Paul Joseph is a member of our parish. His first programming language at school was LOGO. His interest in art and computing led to a career in 3D computer graphics.

November 8 is National STEM/STEAM day here in the US. This is a day to focus increasing awareness in the fields of science, technology, engineering, arts & math. In view of this day, I wanted to talk about a remarkable Catholic Nun Sr. Mary Kenneth Keller and her contributions to the field of Computer Science & Education.

These days we are all too familiar with the image of rockstar programmers, whose personalities are just as impressive as their coding abilities. However, the history of computing is filled with many unsung women and men, who worked tirelessly with the limited technology they had at their disposal.

One such pioneer is Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, BVM. I came across a mention of Sister Mary Kenneth Keller’s contributions to the field of Computer Science, in Bishop Robert Barron’s site https://www.reasonfaithscience.com/. Even though I am in the software industry, her name and contributions weren’t familiar to me.

Sister Mary Kenneth Keller was a Roman Catholic Nun, born in 1913. She followed her calling to the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Iowa, USA) in 1932. She professed her vows in 1940.

She earned a B.S. in math (1943) and an M.S. in math and physics (1953). In those days colleges did not have programs dedicated to computer engineering and the field was still developing. Many of the early computer engineers were mathematicians and physicists.

In 1958, Sr. Keller joined the computer science center at Dartmouth College. At this time the center was all male. Special permission had to be granted to allow Sister to join the center!

Computers in the 50s were very different from what we are used to today. They occupied large rooms, had a fraction of the computing and memory capacity of the device you are reading this article on.

As you may have guessed, you needed an M.S. in Mathematics or Physics to use a computer back then.

This is where Sister Mary’s pioneering work comes in. At Dartmouth, she worked with John G Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz to develop the BASIC programming language. BASIC is an acronym for Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

The goal of BASIC was to make programming easy for everyone.

Back then you needed to understand how the internal parts of the computer operated, to “program” it. BASIC used human friendly commands such as IF, DO, WHILE, GOTO. As the name suggests, it was an easy way for beginners to get into computing.

In 1965, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, BVM was awarded a Phd in Computer Science. She was the first woman in the US to be awarded this degree. She also happened to be one of 2 people in the US who were awarded this degree on the same day.

Legacy

Sister Mary Keller did not stop there. She saw the potential for all to benefit from computers. She was passionate about making the field accessible to everyone. She founded the computer science department at Clarke College in Iowa. She led the department for 20 years. She continued to advocate for women in computer science.

After her death in 1985, the computer center was renamed to Keller Computer Center and Information Service.

“We’re having an information explosion, among others, and it’s certainly obvious that information is of no use unless it’s available.” ~ Sister Mary Kenneth Keller

Fun programming for kids

There are many wonderful and free resources to learn programming these days. For the younger kids, my favorite language is LOGO. LOGO is a simple language that involves fundamentals of programming and computer graphics. I was fortunate enough to learn LOGO when I was young and believe it was influential in getting me interested in computers.

https://turtleacademy.com/ has free self guided exercises for young and old.

Google Sites

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