ANNIE 'JUMP' CANNON
Annie Jump Cannon (December 11, 1863 – April 13, 1941) was an American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures. Annie never married but was happy to be an aunt to her brother's
children.
Not long after the work on the Draper Catalog began, a disagreement developed as to how to classify the stars. Antonia Maury, who was also Henry Draper's niece, insisted on a complex classification system while Williamina Fleming, who was overseeing the project for Pickering, wanted a much more simple, straightforward approach. Annie Jump Cannon negotiated a compromise. She started by examining the bright southern hemisphere stars. To these stars she applied a third system, a division of stars into the spectral classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M. She gave her system a mnemonic of "Oh Be a Fine Girl and Kiss Me."
At this time the women astronomers doing this groundbreaking work at Harvard Observatory were paid 25 cents a day. The secretaries at Harvard were paid more.
Annie’s work was “theory laced” but simplified. How she could see the stars or stellar spectra was extraordinary. Her Henry Draper Catalogue listed nearly 230,000 stars was valued as the work of a single observer. Annie also published many other catalogues of variable stars, including 300 that she discovered. Her career lasted more than 40 years in which time women won acceptance into science.
Annie Jump Cannon died April 13, 1941 after receiving a regular Harvard appointment as the William C. Bond Astronomer. She also received the Henry Draper Medal, which only one other female has won, Martha P. Haynes (who shared it with a male colleague).
“In our troubled days it is good to have something outside our planet, something fine and distant for comfort.”
TIMELINE
1896- Annie Jump Cannon begins volunteering at the Observatory while taking graduate classes at Radcliffe. She is mostly deaf due to contracting scarlet fever after finishing college at Wellesley. Cannon is eventually hired as an official computer. She studies stellar spectra and upgrades Fleming’s stellar classification system. Additionally, she leads a team of computers in publishing nine volumes of the Henry Draper Catalogue between 1918-1924. She also creates the Harvard Catalogue of Variable Stars and the star classification sequence OBAFGKM (known by its mnemonic device: Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me).
1906- Pickering orders a large scale effort to determine stellar magnitudes with the use of photography after 20 years of experimentation.
1911- Pickering promotes Cannon as the second Curator of Astronomical Photographs though Harvard President Lowell refuses to allow her to be listed in the staff catalog. Cannon is, finally, recognized by the corporation and receives an official appointment in 1938.
1919- To date, forty women have worked in the observatory since 1875.
1932- Annie Cannon wins the Ellen Richards research prize for women distinguished in science. She gives the reward money to the American Astronomical Society to establish the Annie Jump Cannon Prize for women astronomers.
1938- Annie Cannon is finally recognized as the Curator of Astronomical Photographs by the Harvard Corporation. That same year she’s named the William Cranch Bond Astronomer at Harvard. She also becomes the first recipient of the Cecelia Payne Gaposchkin Award.
1940- Annie Jump Cannon retires. No new Curator of Astronomical Photographs is known to have been appointed until Martha Hazen in the 1960s. Cannon’s former assistant, Margaret Mayall Walton, completes the last of Cannon’s duties.
1977- Women students are admitted to Harvard University.
