Underpaid and Discriminated Against

Annie Jump Cannon was a pioneering astronomer who specializesd in the classification of stellar spectra.

Born in 1863, she was the eldest daughter of Deleware State Senator Wilson Cannon and Mary.  Annie Cannon was inspired by her mother to pursue science.  They would often open the trapdoor to the roof of their home so they could watch the stars in the small observatory the two of them had built.

 One of the first women from Delaware to attend college, she was her class valedictorian when she graduated from Wellesley College, where she studied physics and astronomy despite the fact she experienced progressive hearing loss starting at a young age.

In 1896, she was hired as a “woman computer” at the Harvard College Observatory, along with another prominent deaf astronomer, Henrietta Swan Leavitt.

The work involved looking at photos of stars and calculating their brightness, position, and color. Unfortunately the two were paid between 25 and 50 cents an hour—half the rate paid to men doing similar work.  This, however, did not stop Cannon from making major scientific discoveries.

In a catalog of 1,122 stars published in 1901 Cannon drastically simplified classifying stars.  It was soon recognized that Cannon was actually classifying stars according to their temperature and her spectral classifications were universally adopted.  In 1922 the International Astronomical Union adopted Cannon's method as the official spectral classification system.

She eventually obtained and classified spectra for more than 225,000 stars.  Her work was published in nine volumes as the Henry Draper Catalogue (1918-24).

In addition to her scientific work, Cannon also worked for women’s rights. She was dedicated to fighting for women’s suffrage and was a member of the National Women’s Party. In 1923, Cannon was voted one of the 12 greatest living women in America by the National League of Women Voters.

After decades of hard work, Cannon was finally appointed a permanent faculty position at the Harvard College Observatory in 1938. Although she officially retired two years later, Cannon worked in the observatory all the way up until her death in 1941.

Annie Jump Cannon died in April of 1941 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was seventy-seven years old.

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