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Her star classification system earned her title of astronomer
Monday, March 06, 2000
A century ago, the field of astronomy did not offer women and men the same opportunities. The most prestigious astronomical jobs available to women were based at the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., where a team of women analyzed data gathered about stars and carried out lengthy astronomical calculations. They were known as "computers."
In 1896, Annie Jump Cannon, the daughter of a wealthy Delaware shipbuilder, joined the computers. She had earned a degree in physics from Wellesley College and when she joined the staff at Harvard, she began work on classifying stars. During the next 40 years, Cannon studied the light from nearly 400,000 stars. She developed a system for classifying stars based on their temperatures.
Her work was published in a nine-volume set of books called the Henry Draper Catalogue. Draper was a wealthy amateur astronomer, and his wife donated the funds to pay for the publishing of the books after his death. Cannon's work is still the standard on which star classification is based. She grouped the stars by the letters O, B, A, F, G, K, M.
Cannon was recognized as the world's expert on star classification, but she continued to work at Harvard with no more lofty title than "astronomical assistant." It was not until 1938 -- 20 years after the first of the Draper Catalogues was printed and when she was 74 -- that Cannon was given a permanent position at the observatory and received the official title of "astronomer."
-- By John G. Radzilowicz, director, Henry Buhl, Jr. Planetarium & Observatory
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