Annie Jump Cannon

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Annie Jump Cannon
By Willis Kliefoth
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CHILDHOOD

• She was born on December 11, 1863 in Dover,
  Delaware.

• Her father, Wilson Lee Cannon, was a State
  senator.

• Her mother was Mary Elizabeth Jump. Her mother
  influenced her to have an interest in astronomy.

She was the oldest of three children.
Picture a prism with white light shining through
it, creating the color spectra. Annie observed
such affects in objects at home.

• She enjoyed reading her mothers almanacs and
  observing the way light hit crystal objects, such
  as chandeliers.

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EDUCATION

• She was one of the first women in Delaware to
  attend college.
• She attended Wellesley College
• She attended Radcliffe College.

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Wellesley College

• Annie Jump Cannon went to Wellesley College for
  Women in 1880. Here she developed an interest in
  astronomy, and, more specifically, the stellar
  spectroscopy. In 1894 she returned to Wellesley
  for a graduate study in astronomy and in physics.
  In 1895 she started at Radcliffe.

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Radcliffe

• In 1895 Annie started at Radcliffe. Here she
  studied under Astronomer Edward C. Pickering.
  Pickering was the director of the Harvard College
  Observatory. He had been a teacher at The
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he
  built the first instructional physics laboratory
  in the United States. He received many awards for
  his work at Harvard.

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The Harvard Observatory

• In 1896, She was appointed as an assistant at The
  Harvard Observatory. Pickering had developed a
  system of classifying stars using their spectra.
  Annie worked with Pickering to refine the Harvard
  spectral classification system. The
  classification system used the prism spectra on
  photographic plates. In 1911 she was appointed
  curator of astronomical photographs.

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The Stellar Spectroscopy

• The Harvard Classification system is a way of
  classifying stars to different groups, depending
  on their temperature. Astronomers would estimate
  their temperatures using charts of their spectra.
  Annie Cannon classified stars down to the ninth
  magnitude, but it is nearly impossible to see a
  star of the sixth magnitude, as it is extremely
  faint.

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Classifying stars

• It was around 1911 that Annie started the project
  that she is known so well for. She began to
  classify stars with the Harvard system. Annie
  classified a quarter of a million stars while at
  Harvard. These works were published in nine
  volumes in the Henry Draper Catalogue between
  1918 and 1924. In her lifetime she discovered
  around 300 hundred stars and 5 novae. In 1924 her
  continued work was printed in the Henry Draper
  Extension. She retired from the Observatory in
  1940.

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Awards

• 1925 She became the first woman to receive an
  honorary doctorate from Oxford.
• She received five other honorary doctorates.
• 1931 She received the Draper Gold Medal from the
  National Academy of Sciences.
• In 1933 she created the Annie J. Cannon Prize of
  the American Astronomical Society.

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Personal Life

• Between her two terms at Wellesley, Annie got
  scarlet fever and was left nearly deaf.
• She loved to travel, write, socialize, and go to
  the opera.
• She died on April 13, 1941 in Cambridge
  Massachusetts.

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In troubled days it is good to have something
outside our planet, something fine and distant
for comfort.
THE END
-ANNIE JUMP CANNON
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Bibliography

• Encyclopedia Britannica. Cannon, Annie Jump.
  Retrieved November 17, 2003. http//search.eb.com/
  eb/article?eu20317
• Evans, J.C.. Annie Jump Cannon. Physics and
  Astronomy Department, George Mason University.
  Retrieved November 17, 2003. http//www.physics.gm
  u.edu/classinfo/astr103/coursenotes/ECText/Bios/ca
  nnon.htm
• Saari, Peggy and Allison, Stephen. The Lives and
  Works and Works of 150 scientists. UXL
  Publications, 1996.
• The Bruce Medalists. Edward C. Pickering
  Retrieved November 18, 2003. http//www.phys-astro
  .sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Pickering/
• Pictures courtesy of http//images.google.com
• Harvard Classification System." Encyclopedia
  Britannica. 2003.  Encyclopedia Britannica
  Premium Service.20 Nov, 2003  lthttp//www.britann
  ica.com/eb/article?eu40239gt. APA style