AAAS Featured Fellow
Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941)
Elected AAAS Fellow in 1918 (Section not listed)
Annie Jump Cannon was an astronomer, suffragist, and photographer. Nearly deaf for much of her life, Cannon is credited with the invention of the Harvard spectral classification system, which assigns stars to a class based on their temperature and spectral types.
Cannon was born in Dover, Delaware. Her mother, Mary, taught Cannon to recognize constellations when she was a child and encouraged her interest in astronomy. In 1880 Cannon enrolled in Wellesley College, where she studied under Sarah Frances Whiting, one of the nation’s only women physicists at the time. Later in life, Cannon would recall Whiting dragging Cannon and her classmates out early “morning after morning” to see the Great Comet of 1882.
In 1884, Cannon graduated as valedictorian with a degree in physics. Nowadays, such an achievement might propel a student into a lofty career. But options for women were limited in the late 19th century, and after graduation Cannon returned home to Delaware, where she would remain for the next ten years.
Over the next decade, Cannon turned her attention to pursuits other than astronomy and physics. She tutored children in mathematics and history, played the organ at her church, and became proficient in photography. In 1892, Cannon travelled throughout Europe taking photos with a box camera. The next year, a pamphlet compiling her photographs of Spain was circulated as a souvenir at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition.
At some point in her young adulthood(sources vary as to exactly when), Cannon contracted scarlet fever. Although she survived the disease, it permanently affected her hearing, leaving her nearly deaf for the rest of her life.
In 1894, Cannon’s mother died, and Cannon turned her attention back towards the stars. She reached out to her former instructor, Dr. Whiting, who hired her as a junior physics teacher at Wellesley College. The following year, while still teaching, Cannon enrolled as a “special student” of astronomy at Radcliffe Women’s College at Harvard, eventually receiving her master’s degree in 1907.
In the meantime, Cannon began working as one of the “Harvard computers,” a highly skilled team of women working to process astronomical data at the Harvard College Observatory. Led initially by Edward Charles Pickering, the team was composed of women for the simple fact that they could be paid half what male employees would require.
The often-tedious work involved measuring the brightness, position, and spectra of hundreds of thousands of stars imaged on glass plates, and using that information to categorize each star. Cannon excelled at this work, not only through her speed and accuracy—she was able to catalogue up to three stars a minute—but by greatly improving on the previous classification system.
Building on the work of other computers, including Pickering, Nettie Farrar, Antonia Maury, and Williamina P.S. Fleming, Cannon simplified the Observatory’s classification system into just seven categories. Her resulting scheme, under which she classified stars as O, B, A, F, G, K, and M (remembered by the mnemonic Oh Be A Fine Girl—Kiss Me!), was adopted in 1922 by the International Astronomical Union as the official classification system for stars.
Using the system—which would be named after Harvard, not the woman who discovered it—and her innate gift for the task, Cannon classified over 350,000 stars in her lifetime. And while her work may have been appreciated by individual astronomers, some societies were slower to extend recognition. In 1923 one organization, the National Academy of Sciences, rejected her election to the Academy due to her deafness after at least one academy member made the eugenicist argument that “physical defectives” should not be admitted.
Cannon career in astronomy lasted for over forty years. In 1922, she spent six months working at Harvard’s Arequipa Observatory in Peru. Here, she was allowed to operate the telescope and photograph the sky, producing plates like the ones she had only been allowed to study at Harvard. In 1935 she established the Annie J. Cannon Prize to recognize the achievements of women in astronomy. The American Astronomical Society still gives this prize today. Cannon officially retired in 1940, although her passion for the stars was such that she continued working almost until she died at the age of 77 in 1941.
Historic Fellows Listing
“Fellows shall be nominated ... from such of the members as are professionally engaged in science, or have by their labors aided in advancing science.”
AAAS Constitution
Adopted by the Standing Committee
12 August 1874
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is proud to present a historic list of distinguished members elected to the status of Fellow from the honor’s inception to the present day. These individuals are recognized for their extraordinary achievements across disciplines, and AAAS commends their dedication and commitment. Election to Fellow is a lifetime honor.
This is a historic list, therefore each Fellow’s institution at the time of election will be noted (where the historic records do not provide an institution, we have included a geographic region), along with the disciplinary section through which they were nominated, and year of election. This is a static list and will only be modified once a year to include the most recent class of Fellows.
For a list of AAAS Fellows who have maintained active member status with the organization (and therefore may serve as a sponsor on a new Fellow nomination), please refer to the list foundhere.
For general information on nominating Fellows, please refer to thispage.
Should you have any questions about this historic list, please email:governance@aaas.org
