True Life Tuesday: Annie Jump Cannon

Annie Jump Cannon was born on December 11, 1863 in Dover, Delaware. She was the oldest daughter of Wilson Cannon - a ship builder and state senator - and Mary Jump. He mother taught her the constellations and encouraged her love of astronomy. 

She attended Wilmington Conference Academy (later known as Wesley College). She was a very promising student, especially in mathematics. In 1880 she went to Wellesley College where she studied physics and astronomy. She graduated in 1884 with a degree in physics and was valedictorian of her class. After graduation she returned home to Dover where she stayed for the next decade.

In 1892 she travelled through Europe takin part in another of her passions photography. A pamphlet of her pictured from Spain called In the Footsteps of Columbus was given as a souvenir at the Chicago World Colombian Expo in 1893. Soon after her return from Europe she contracted scarlet fever which left her almost completely deaf. This caused her issues with socialization which led her to throw herself into her work.

Annie's mother died in 1894 and after that her home life became difficult. She wrote to her former professor at Wellesley, Sarah Francis Whiting, and was hired as a junior physics teacher at the college. While there she took graduate courses in physics and astronomy and also learned spectroscopy. She eventually enrolled at Radcliffe College as a "special student" to gain access to their better telescope. She eventually earned her Masters degree from Wellesley College in 1907.

In 1896 Annie was hired by Edward C. Pickering to be his assistant at the Harvard College Observatory.  She was also part of the Harvard Computers, a group of women hired by Pickering to map and define every star in the sky. She was one of the fastest and most successful cataloger and was eventually able to classify 3 stars per minute. In 1911 she was made curator of Astronomical Photos at Harvard. In 1921 she received an honorary doctorate from Groningen University in the Netherlands - one of the first women to receive such a degree from a European university. In 1922 the International Astronomical Union formally adopted her stellar classification system and it is still being used today. She also became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Oxford University. In 1938 she was named the William C. Bond Astronomer at Harvard.

Annie retired 1940 though she continued to work in the observatory until just before she died. She dies on April 13, 1941 in a Cambridge hospital after a month long illness. The American Astronomical Society presents the Annie Jump Cannon award to female astronomers for their distinguished work in astronomy. She classified more stars than anyone else, around 350,000. During her career she found 300 variable stars, 5 novas and a spectroscopic binary.