Mary Kenneth Keller, B.V.M. (December 17, 1913 – January 10, 1985) was an American Roman Catholic religious sister, educator and pioneer in computer science. She and Irving C. Tang were the first two people to earn a doctorate in computer science in the United States.>

Sister Kenneth Keller was born in Cleveland, Ohio, supposedly on December 17th, 1913, though the date of birth is debated. Very little is known of her early life. She entered the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dubuqye, Iowa, in 1932 and took her vows in 1940.

She completed both her B.S. (Bachelor of Science) in Mathematics in 1943 and her M.S. (Master of Science) in Mathematics and Physics in 1953 from DePaul University in Chicago. Keller earned her Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1965.Her dissertation, Inductive Inference on Computer Generated Patterns,focused on “constructing algorithms that performed analytic differentiation on algebraic expression, written in CDC FORTRAN 63.

Throughout Keller’s gradsuate studies, she was affiliated with various institutions including the University of Michigan, Purdue, and Dartmouth.In 1958, Keller began working at the National Science Foundation workshop in the computer science center at Dartmouth College, a male-only institution at the time, where she participated in the implementation of the first DTSS BASIC Kernel for the language, working under John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz along with about a dozen other students.
Keller believed in the potential for computers to increase access to information and promote education.After finishing her doctorate in 1965, Keller founded the computer science department at Clarke College (now Clarke University), a Catholic women’s college founded by Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dubuque, Iowa. That same year, that National Science Foundation awarded her a grant of $25,000 payable over two years for “instructional equipment for undergraduate education.”One of the first computer science departments at a small college, Keller directed this department for twenty years.Clarke College now has the Keller Computer Center and Information Services, which is named after her and which provides computing and telecommunication support to Clarke College students, faculty members, and staff. The college has also established the Mary Kenneth Keller Computer Science Scholarship in her honor.

“We’re having an information explosion, among others, and it’s certainly obvious that information is of no use unless it’s available.”
“For the first time, we can now mechanically simulate the cognitive process. We can make studies in artificial intelligence. Beyond that, this mechanism [the computer] can be used to assist humans in learning. As we are going to have more mature students in greater numbers as time goes on, this type of teaching will probably be increasingly important.”

“Its function in information retrieval will make it the hub of tomorrow’s libraries.”