Veiled Figures: Pioneering Women Religious in the Sciences

Abstract

Veiled Figures: Pioneering Women Religious in the Sciences Jennifer A Head Traditionally, the term ‘Catholic Sister’ has conjured an image of either a cloistered woman in contemplative prayer or a woman in a habit, working as a nurse or teacher. Today that image has expanded to a woman wearing a cross around her neck and working in pastoral care, parish ministry or social justice movements. Rarely, if ever, does this image include a woman at the forefront of computer science, working with plutonium or providing flight instruction to future military pilots. This article explores some of the ‘hidden history’ of Catholic women religious in science.1 This hidden history of women religious includes the first female pharmacist in America, the creator of the first reasonably priced and easily constructed incubator for premature babies and one of the first women to receive a PhD in the field of computer science. Sisters were also pioneers in the fields of zoology, cytogenetics, astrophysics and the treatment of polio. In many cases, they were the first women granted advanced degrees from institutions previously only open to men. Many of these women were also strong advocates for the inclusion of women in the sciences – one even permitted her students to bring their children to class, if childcare was not available. The first two sisters I encountered were both Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVMs): Sr Mary Kenneth Keller (1913–85) and Sr Mary Therese Langerbeck (1902–93). Mary Kenneth Keller (1913–85), computer scientist Sister Mary Kenneth Keller was among the first women to receive a PhD in computer science. She received her degree from the University of WisconsinMadison in 1964 and was the first person to receive such a degree from that educational institution. Sr Kenneth first became interested in the field of computer science while studying for a Master’s degree in Mathematics at DePaul University in the early 1950s. In 1958, she applied for a six-month National Science Foundation workshop at Dartmouth University’s Computer Veiled Figures: Pioneering Women Religious in the Sciences Studies • volume 107 • number 427 293 Center. She was the first woman permitted to work in the computer centre. As part of this workshop, she assisted in the development of BASIC – the first ‘easy to learn’ computer language. After receiving her PhD, she was appointed chair of the newly created computer science department at Clarke College (now Clarke University), a position she would hold for almost twenty years. At the time, Clarke was a women’s college, though it has since gone ‘co-ed’. Under Sr Kenneth’s leadership, the programme grew to include a master’s degree programme in Computer Applications in Education. The programme was also open to students from nearby Loras College, as well as to teachers, local business owners, bankers and others for whom computer use was beginning to be a workplace requirement. Sr Kenneth was among the first to recognise the future importance of computers, noting in 1964 that students in such fields as education, psychology and the sciences were already finding uses for computers in their academic pursuits. She and other members of the computer science faculty and staff wrote programmes to assist academic departments on campus. Chemistry students ran simulated experiments while psychology students used a programme to run a hypothetical ‘stat rat’ through a learning maze, saving time ‘both ours and the rat’s!’2 She also anticipated the importance computers would have in libraries, recognising that ‘its function in information retrieval will make it the hub of tomorrow’s libraries’.3 She believed that using a computer required two virtues: humility and patience. Humility, because the computer did not make mistakes – the programmer did. Patience was required in ‘de-bugging’ the programme and determining which lines of code created the mistakes.4 In addition to her responsibilities as a Clarke faculty member, Sr Kenneth authored four books in her field. She also served as a consultant for various governmental and civic groups including the State of Illinois and the City of Dubuque, Iowa. A fixture in the early ‘IT’ world of the Upper Mississippi River Valley, she once commented that ‘around Dubuque nobody buys a computer...