PARA ∙PAR@ ` ╔TEXT ` ╗Cannon, Annie Jump1863╨1941astronomerBorn on December 11, 1863, in Dover, Delaware, Annie Cannon graduated from Wellesley College in 1884. For several years thereafter she traveled and dabbled in photography and music. In 1894 she returned to Wellesley for a year of advanced study in astronomy, and in 1895 she enrolled at Radcliffe in order to continue her studies under Professor Edward C. Pickering. In 1896 she was named an assistant in the Harvard Observatory. There, joining Williamina P. S. Fleming, she devoted her energies to the ambitious project, begun in 1885 by Pickering, the observatory╒s director, of recording, classifying, and cataloging the spectra of all stars down to those of the ninth magnitude. The scheme of spectral classification by surface temperature used for the project and later (1910) universally adopted was largely her work, developed out of Pickering╒s and Fleming╒s earlier systems, and she eventually obtained and classified spectra for more than 225,000 stars, publishing them in nine volumes as the Henry Draper Catalogue, 1918╨1924. In 1911 Cannon succeeded Fleming as curator of astronomical photographs at the observatory, and in 1938 she was named William Cranch Bond Professor of Astronomy. After 1924 she extended her work, cataloging tens of thousands of additional stars down to the eleventh magnitude for the Henry Draper Extension, published in two volumes in 1925 and 1949. The work was an invaluable contribution to astronomy, bearing strongly on countless other problems and areas of research and exerting major influence on the evolution of the science from one of mere observation to one of great theoretical and philosophical content. In the course of her work she also discovered some 300 variable stars and 5 novae. Among the numerous honors and awards accorded her were the first honorary doctorate from Oxford University to be awarded to a woman, 1925, and the Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1931. In 1933 she established the Annie J. Cannon Prize of the American Astronomical Society. Cannon officially retired from the observatory in 1940 but carried on research until her death in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 13, 1941. ■styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ ) !I Ω !I ▐ !I !I / !I > 5¬ ? !I \ !I r !I link ` HYPR Ω
