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The first woman PhD in computer science was a nun (2013)
- jarmitage 6y agoI hereby rename NaN to Nun in her honour
- jvandonsel 6y ago"Dartmouth relaxed the rule barring women from its computer center..." Just wow.
- 6510 6y agoI've been working at a joke about men creating languages and parallel processing but that's a story for a different thread.
- PeterStuer 6y agoAccording to Wikipedia Dartmouth College was a male only college until 1972. Woman did work as employees at the computer center, and bringing dates from nearby schools and colleges to the computing center was apparently a thing as students liked to show off their computer skills. Also of note: unlike other colleges, students at Dartmouth didn't need to pay for computer time, creating both opportunity but potentially also the need to 'guard' against outsiders.
- ponker 6y agoHaha, I love the idea of impressing women by showing them your computer skills.
- notRobot 6y agoDunno what to say, green-on-black terminals, clean code and fast typing do always manage to turn me on ;)
- PeterStuer 6y agoGiven the era I think we are talking key punches, card readers and line printers here.
- coldcode 6y agoMaking 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- raxxorrax 6y agoBlaise Pascal is another example. Heard he did something with all kinds of triangles. He was quite invasive with his faith though.
- sdiq 6y agoAnd Reverend Bayes, too.
- jll29 6y agoYes, REVEREND Bayes was clergy, too, and what would we do in machine learning without Bayes' theorem? (His grave is in London.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem
- joycian 6y agoIt seems Bayes never actually wrote down what is now called Bayes Theorem. (Perhaps he knew of it). I think it was Laplace that recognized the full generality of the relationship.
- vulcan01 6y agoGregor Mendel was a monk who established many of the rules of heredity (Mendelian inheritance).
- protomyth 6y agoA service program I was associated with in the 90's had a government requirement that all social workers had their actions signed off my someone with a Masters in Social Work. That person was a Nun. It was amazing how many of the people we needed to provide the expertise to run those programs were Nuns.
- fanf2 6y agoWomen got PhDs in computing earlier outside the USA, for instance Beatrice Worsley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Worsley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Worsley
- jkingsbery 6y agoAccording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kenneth_Keller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kenneth_Keller and https://www.cs.wisc.edu/2019/03/18/2759/ 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-science-phd%3F 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."
- fanf2 6y agoThe first PhD in computing was David Wheeler in 1951 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wheeler_(computer_scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wheeler_(computer_scient...
- hashhar 6y agoHis PhD was in Mathematics AFAIR. Also note that the Wikipedia article is missing a citation on that point and further discussion on the talk page.
- fanf2 6y agoThe title of his PhD dissertation was "Automatic computing with the EDSAC"
- joshuaissac 6y agoThe claim is properly referenced now.
- jkingsbery 6y agoInteresting, wasn't aware! I was pretty ignorant about this before today. What I've learned today is (1) that there are several competing claims for who has the first PhD in Computer Science (or the first PhD by an American, or Woman...), (2) all of those claims depend not on the quality of the work by the person but rather by whether something counts as "computer science" (does it have to be issued by a Computer Science department? Department with Computer Science in the name? Can the degree just say it's for Computer Science? Does it depend on the thesis topic?), and (3) for the most part none of the candidates really care too much about the distinctions about who was 1st. But it is an interesting exercise in learning about computer scientists that I didn't know much about before.
- 6510 6y agoThe first woman PhD in Computer Science was Sister Mary Kenneth Keller
- ppg677 6y agoNot just first "woman" PhD, but tied for first Computer Science PhD (in the U.S.).
- ppg677 6y agoBetter 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/ https://www.cs.wisc.edu/2019/03/18/2759/
- wefarrell 6y agoMy 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.
- vanderZwan 6y agoIt's not really surprising, is it? In a society that demands of women to get married and raise kids instead of work, it's mostly women who aren't allowed to marry and have kids who get to do things like follow a higher education.
- befeltingu 6y agoNobody is demanding that. It could just be that they want to.
- manfredo 6y agoIt's was definitely demanded or at least heavily expected in the 60s and 50s (when these women grew up).
- HarryHirsch 6y agoNowadays it's demanded that both husband and wife work, and it gave us the two-income trap. It's not even progress.
- erichocean 6y agoIf you have twice the labor, you can pay each person half as much (and double your profit) since consumption stays the same (to a rough approximation). Financial capitalism at its best.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoWhat you actually see is that with two full incomes housing prices went up. That's the supply side reacting to more money sloshing around. On the demand side, when both parents work there are now expenses for childcare, prepared food & so on. You just have increased financial insecurity because now a family must rely on two incomes. In the past, when one spouse lost their job the other might find one or go to full time employment, now both parents have to be employed to be financially stable. That isn't even progress for those who have to work for a living. For the investor class it's of course different.
- skohan 6y agoNikola 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...
- francisofascii 6y agoI would argue that if you are not hampered by sexual pursuits, it frees your brain up for technical ones. https://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheAbstinence.htm https://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheAbstinence.htm
- yters 6y agoI think my mind did better with abstract thought before puberty.
- skohan 6y agoI would argue it's probably a bit of both. Fulfilling sexual relationships are one way to feel a sense of satisfaction in life, and having kids is one way to achieve a kind of legacy. Solving hard technical problems and moving science forward is another way to achieve the same goals. One could pursue both, but if you already have one you might be less likely to feel a strong visceral need for the other.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mister_hn 6y agoI've reading this news at least for the third time here on HW in this week. Nice achievement but keep it DRY
- erichocean 6y agoIf we keep reposting the article, it won't feel so exceptional…
- dang 6y agoWhat were those other posts? I only found one from 7 years ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=nun%20phd&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- azmarks 6y agoNo wonder we start counting at zero, it all started with a nun.
- pdubs1 6y agoThe first [X] who did [Y] was a [Z]. Fill in the blanks. Then follow the logic: "Yes, I know we are "equal" but oh my goodness, look, this equal person did this equal thing!" ... yet this excitement implies lack of equality-- if equality was inherent, there would be no need to exclaim equality excitedly.
- dhosek 6y agoTo 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.
- starpilot 6y agoWhen I was in college in engineering, I noticed a woman dressed in a sister's outfit always in the labs, I think she was studying EE? She was running PSpice. Very interesting.
- dhosek 6y agoI've known a large number of Catholic sisters over the years. They've been, without exception, some of the most interesting people I've ever known. When my mom was in the hospital last year, she had regular visits from an 89-year-old sister who came just to chat, even though my mom isn't Catholic (and there was no attempt to proselytize, I should add). It as more just a case of she enjoyed being able to provide socialization with the elderly women who were in the hospital.
- sangnoir 6y agoI'd argue the best known monk in the sciences is Gregor Mendel , who was an Augustinian friar and genetics research pioneer. As an aside, it always rubs me the wrong way when people insinuate the (Catholic) church is anti-science when the long list of contributions to science says otherwise.
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- chx 6y agoErm, 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 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.
- mattkevan 6y agoThere’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-digital-nun-the-Sister-funding-her-monastery-through-her-apps.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11511596/Meet-...
- racecondition 6y agoJust going to leave this here: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
- jdtang13 6y agoOkay. 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_Blessed_Virgin_Mary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisters_of_Charity_of_the_Bles...