Women got PhDs in computing earlier outside the USA, for instance Beatrice Worsley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Worsley
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.
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.
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.
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...
"Dartmouth relaxed the rule barring women from its computer center..."
Just wow.
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-...
Not just first "woman" PhD, but tied for first Computer Science PhD (in the U.S.).
Better article explaining she is actually first PhD in the U.S. for Computer Science. Not just first woman. https://www.cs.wisc.edu/2019/03/18/2759/
I hereby rename NaN to Nun in her honour
The first woman PhD in Computer Science was Sister Mary Kenneth Keller
Just going to leave this here: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
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.
I've reading this news at least for the third time here on HW in this week.
Nice achievement but keep it DRY
No wonder we start counting at zero, it all started with a nun.
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...
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."