Annie Jump Cannon

Annie Jump Cannon was an American astronomer. She was born on December 11, 1863 in Dover, Delaware and died on April 13, 1941 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Annie Jump Cannon in 1922

Life

With an old astronomy book, Cannon's mother taught her the constellations and other things about stars when she was little. She encouraged her to learn mathematics, chemistry and biology at Wellesley College. They loved the stars. After graduation she took up photography, and many of her pictures of Europe were published. She caught Scarlet fever which made her deaf. She became an instructor at Wellesley and learned spectroscopy.

Cannon was a great astronomer and gave us new information about the stars.

Jobs and studies  

Cannon had graduate studies in math, physics, and astronomy. She also received many awards such as the Henry Draper Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the Ellen Richards Award, and she was the first woman to ever receive the honorary doctorate of science at Oxford University. She also became part of the Harvard Astronomy staff. She discovered 300 variable stars, five novae stars, and a binary star while on the staff. Cannon observed and then classified about 400,000 stars. She invented the Harvard system which is still the usual method of stellar classification according to color and temperature.

Hardships

Cannon had many hardships. Cannon was a women scientist in a world of men. She had to advocate for herself. She was one of the first women in astronomy at her time. Cannon also faced the hardship of being deaf. Cannon didn’t have access to hearing aids. People had decided not to vote for her for awards despite her discoveries because she was deaf. Now many people admire her and wish to follow in her footsteps. Cannon struggled in a world of stereotypes and first times but she managed to succeed.