Talk:Mary Kenneth Keller

Role in the development of Basic

A private communication from Dianne P. O'Leary says that "although the published references said that Sister Mary Kenneth Keller studied at Dartmouth in 1958, I just found a resume she wrote in 1965 saying that she was at Dartmouth in 1961. This is much more consistent with the likely dates of the summer program for high school teachers, so I believe it is accurate." Keller could not have participated in the development of Dartmouth Basic and the Dartmouth Time Sharing System at Dartmouth College in 1958 because Dartmouth did not obtain its first computer, an LGP-30, until 1959.

I recall seeing a nun at Dartmouth when I was an undergraduate there from 1959 through 1963. In 1961, I was writing Algol compilers for the LGP-30 (see the article on Dartmouth ALGOL 30). Keller could well have witnessed how the use of Algol in undergraduate education at Dartmouth served as a prelude to the development of Basic in 1965.

SJGarland (talk) 17:19, 31 December 2021 (UTC)SJGarland

First American?

This says she was the first woman, not the first American (I know it's mental floss, but still): http://mentalfloss.com/article/53178/first-woman-earn-phd-computer-science-was-nun — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:B89C:CF80:802:8D89:796:52EC (talk) 15:21, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

All the sources agree that she is the first American woman. Thanks for pointing that out. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:08, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Records show that she along with Irving Tang were the first in America to earn a Ph.D in Computer Science both earning their degrees in June 1965, this blogger has researched it extensively: http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/159591-who-earned-first-computer-science-phd/fulltext — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.234.64.91 (talk) 20:07, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

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Date of Ph.D.

Feel free to correct me, but if I'm reading the associated bits below correctly, it seems that there is a slight overreach on timing of the Ph.D. I may be miscontruing the timeline in some fashion or the nature of the credential.

Doctorate, earned in by Mary Kenneth Keller [Keller earned her Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1965.] is said to be the first, but is predated by John Henry Holland 1959: "Holland studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a B.S. degree in 1950. He then studied Mathematics at the University of Michigan, receiving an M.A. in 1954. In 1959 he received the first computer science Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Given the research of Ralph L. London, it seems that Holland earned his PhD in "Communication Sciences." University of Michigan's department of "Communication Sciences" was later renamed to "Computer and Communication Sciences" in 1967 and then "Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department" in 1984 after merging with Electrical and Computer Engineering. Because the original degree did not feature "Computer Science" in the name, London excluded Holland from consideration as the "first Computer Science PhD." Holland could be considered "first PhD from a department which would later be called 'computer science'" but I'm not sure that title would hold to scrutiny. If one starts counting non-CS degrees from departments which would eventually evolve or branch into a CS department, there would probably be many more people before Holland who could claim the title of "first."

GottaShowMe (talk) 16:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)