Annie Jump Cannon, born December 11, 1863, Dover, Delaware, was an American astronomer who developed a system for the classification of stellar spectra which s still used today. Cannon was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1925.
She was the eldest of three daughters of Wilson Cannon, a Delaware shipbuilder and state senator, and his second wife, Mary Jump. Annie began her life-long relationship with astronomy as a child when she and her mother watched the stars from the small, home-made observatory they built together. Mary Jump taught her daughter about the constellations and stimulated her interest in science. Her parents, ignoring the prejudices of the time against the university training of women, sent their daughter to Wellesley College, where she studied physics and astronomy. She received her B.S. degree in 1884.
Upon graduating, Annie Cannon returned to Delaware and held various jobs over the next ten years, but concentrated her efforts on photography. At some time during either this period or her years at Wellesley, Annie became completely deaf, possibly due to scarlet fever.
In 1894, she experienced a life-altering event—the unexpected death of her beloved mother. Depressed and almost paralyzed with grief, Annie knew she needed to work, and she appealed to her former teacher at Wellesley, Sarah Frances Whiting, who hired her as an assistant. Whiting, a protege of Harvard College Observatory Directory Edward Pickering, eased Cannon’s path as a “special student” of astronomy at Radcliffe, the women’s college connected to Harvard College, and ultimately, into the observatory itself.
Under Pickering’s tutelage Annie Cannon found herself part of a group that some historians of science have called “Pickering’s women.” Hired to reduce data and carry out astronomical calculations, a number of these assistants worked to complete The Henry Draper Catalogue, an astronomical star catalogue named after the doctor and amateur astronomer who was one of the pioneers of astrophotography. His widow funded the project, which included a telescope for the observations.
The goal of the project was to sort the stars by the appearance of their spectral lines. Annie’s job was to catalog stars with a magnitude (apparent brightness) of nine or more. It was, in fact, Annie Jump Cannon who developed the system of classification ultimately known as the “Harvard system” and used in the catalogue. In 1922, the International Astronomical Union adopted her method as the official system for the classification of solar spectra.
In 1933, she founded the Annie J. Cannon Prize to be awarded periodically to outstanding women astronomers. This prize symbolized what may be Annie Cannon’s greatest achievement—just as her mother had encouraged and supported her scientific ambitions, Annie mentored and promoted the next generation of women astronomers.
SOURCE: AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
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