Annie Jump Cannon, a Deaf woman from the late 1800s was the first to attempt to catalog the differing types of stars into a classification system. She is accredited to the modern Harvard Classification Scheme.
Cannon was born on December 11th, 1863 to her father and his second wife. It was her mother that encouraged Cannon to pursue her love of mathematics and constellations.
As Cannon grew up, she perused further knowledge in the physics, mathematics, and astronomy fields at Wellesley College, a famous women's college at the time, and it is still a prominent college to this day (though now it is co-ed). Cannon seemed to thrive in any science course she took according to her professors.
After traveling the country and learning about photography, in 1893, Cannon was stricken with Scarlet Fever, which affected her to the point of deafness. She would rely on a hearing device for the rest of her life. This did not stop her from furthering her education, receiving her master's from Wellesley College, and becoming a member of Harvard Computers.
Cannon's job at Harvard Computers was to identify and collect data from photographs of stars based on their luminosity, with several other women in her field. Despite their knowledge and education, the women were often ridiculed that they would remain in the workforce and not contribute to home life, marriage, or raising children. Cannon would never marry nor have children.
Cannon is accredited with identifying 350,000 stars throughout her 40-year-long career and earned several awards, including being the only woman to win the Henrey Draper Reward, (Martha P. Hayes also won this award, but she shared the credit with her male colleague)
After Cannon's death, an award was named after her. The "Annie Jump Cannon Award" is rewarded annually to female astronomers for distinguished work in the field.
Fun Fact: Senior Performing Arts Students in the Spring of 2022 performed a play about the life and accomplishments of Annie Jump Cannon. They even included a prop hearing aid based on the hearing aids from the 1920s!
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jump_Cannon
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Annie-Jump-Cannon
- https://www.space.com/34707-annie-jump-cannon-biography.html
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