Mary Kenneth Keller

Born in Ohio in 1913, Mary Kenneth Keller joined the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1932, a Catholic religious congregation. One might say she traded in secular life for a more divine path, eventually professing her vows in 1940. Before computing was cool, or even widely understood, Sister Mary Kenneth was busy laying its foundations. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from DePaul University, likely without a single thought about what a 'boot camp' was.

Her true claim to fame, however, arrived in 1965 when she became the first woman in the United States to snatch up a Ph.D. in computer science, earning it from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. One can only imagine the sheer lack of tweed jackets in the room that day. Afterward, she became a pioneering force at Clarke College in Iowa, establishing one of the nation's first computer science departments and ensuring future generations could properly debug their existential crises.

Sister Mary Kenneth was a strong advocate for women in computing and for using computers to enhance education, which, frankly, sounds rather kvell-worthy, even if her kvelling was more likely to be directed heavenward. She even contributed to the development of the BASIC programming language, proving that nuns aren't just good at wielding rulers, but also at crafting code that would revolutionize the nascent digital world.

Given her lifelong commitment to the Catholic Church and her complete absence of anything remotely Hebraic in her background, we can confidently say that Sister Mary Kenneth Keller was about as Jewish as a communion wafer.