Annie Jump Cannon
Annie Jump Cannon (1863–1941) was a pioneering astronomer whose work cataloging stars was instrumental in the development of stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering (elected to the Academy in 1867), she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, the first serious effort to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures and spectral types.
Born in Dover, Delaware, Cannon was encouraged by her mother to pursue science. Educated at Wellesley College (B.S. in physics and valedictorian, 1884; M.A. in astronomy, 1907), she developed expertise in the new art of photography. In 1896, Cannon became a member of the Harvard Computers, a group of women hired by Harvard Observatory director Edward C. Pickering to complete the Henry Draper Catalogue, with the goal of mapping and defining every star in the sky to a photographic magnitude of about 9.
In 1901, Cannon published her first catalog of stellar spectra. In 1911, she was appointed the Curator of Observational Photographs at Harvard Observatory. She was known for her speed at classifying stars and was credited with classifying five thousand stars per month from 1911–1915. She continued to catalog about 350,000 stars over her lifetime. In 1914, Cannon was elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1921, she became the first woman to receive an honorary Doctor of Astronomy degree from Groningen University in the Netherlands. A year later, the International Astronomical Union adopted Cannon’s method as the official spectral classification system. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1925.
In addition to her scientific work, Cannon worked for women’s rights. She was dedicated to fighting for women’s suffrage and was a member of the National Women’s Party. She was the first woman to receive an honorary degree (1925) from Oxford University and the first woman to be awarded the Henry Draper Medal (1931) from the National Academy of Sciences. In 1938, she became the William C. Bond Astronomer at Harvard University and continued in this role until her death in 1941. The American Astronomical Society presents the Annie Jump Cannon Award annually to female astronomers for distinguished work in astronomy.