安妮·坎农Annie Jump Cannon

美国天文学家安妮·坎农于1863年12月11日出生，父母是Wilson Lee Cannon（1817-1905）和Mary Elizabeth 坎农（1839-1893）。Wilson 坎农是特拉华州的造船商和州参议员，他与第一任妻子Ann Scotten（1818-1859）有四个孩子，即Henry White 坎农（生于1845年）、Ella 坎农（生于约1847年）、Mary Elizabeth Cannon（生于1850年）和Hattie Hester 坎农（生于1856年）。本传记的主人公坎农是Wilson与第二任妻子Mary 坎农的三个孩子中的老大，有两个弟弟，Wilson Lee Cannon（生于约1866年）和Robert Barrett 坎农（生于约1869年）。Mary 坎农童年时对观星感兴趣，并被认为最初激发了女儿坎农对天文学的兴趣。Mary还曾在费城附近的一所贵格会精修学校学习天文学。

正是在Mary对这一学科的鼓励下，坎农会在他们房子的阁楼里，使用一本旧的天文学教科书，学习星座并识别星星。直到1898年，她才发现了她的第一颗星，而它的确认直到1905年才到来。坎农还从她母亲那里学到了家庭经济学，她后来在组织她的研究时派上了用场。

1877年至1880年，她在特拉华州多佛的威尔明顿会议学院（现为卫斯理学院）就读，展现出潜力，尤其是在数学方面。作为最早入学的学生之一，坎农从1880年起就读于马萨诸塞州的韦尔斯利学院，这是当时顶尖的女子学术学校之一。塞西莉亚·佩恩-加波施金写道[17]：-

不久前，她回忆起[在韦尔斯利学院]的那些早期日子，“人们可能会以为女孩们非常严肃认真，”她说，“但她们似乎总是在笑。”她以这种精神度过了一生，总是为许多人看来极其艰苦和苛刻的职业赋予欢乐和活力。

她于1884年毕业，作为告别演说者获得物理学学位。完成学位后，她回到特拉华州度过了接下来的十年。

正是在这段时间里，她培养了对摄影的兴趣和技能。她于1892年航行到西班牙，在那里用她的Kameret相机拍照。对于1893年芝加哥世界哥伦布博览会，她的摄影作品与她自己的散文一起发表在一本名为In the footsteps of Columbus的小册子中。以下是小册子中的一段摘录，以展示坎农的散文：-

哦，西班牙，熙德的故乡，天主教徒伊莎贝拉的故乡，哥伦布的故乡，你拥有其他土地所没有的魅力！你的卡斯蒂利亚山谷将诗意编织进最平凡的灵魂。你的安达卢西亚山脉将浪漫和歌声注入精神本身。我不是艺术家，但你灿烂的阳光在我的Blair胶片上画出了比画笔或铅笔更真实的场景，我不是诗人，但我的Kamaret照片比歌曲或十四行诗更好地歌颂你。

关于小册子的更长摘录，请参见THIS LINK。

此后不久，她因一场猩红热几乎失聪。正是这种残疾可能在某些领域阻碍了她的职业生涯，但从长远来看也可能帮助了她。据信，John Hopkins的Raymond Pearl不会投票让她成为国家科学院的成员，因为她失聪。因此，直到1978年才有女性天文学家当选为该科学院院士。然而，也有人认为她的失聪使她难以社交，导致她选择了一种能够全身心投入工作的生活方式。

她既未结婚，也没有子女。她将自己的成功归功于勤奋工作和心无旁骛[11]：-

我不值得特别的赞扬；我只是专注于我的工作——仅此而已。我发现它是如此引人入胜，以至于其他一切都不存在了。大多数女性的问题在于她们不能坚持自己的工作。她们结婚后就放弃了。请注意，我相信婚姻是件好事，如果女人嫁对了人的话。但它不应比阻止男人的工作更多地阻止女人的工作。

随着1893年她母亲的去世，家里的生活变得更加艰难。坎农回到韦尔斯利学院攻读数学、物理学和天文学的 graduate study。在Sarah Frances Whiting教授（1847-1927）的指导下，她是当时美国为数不多的女物理学家之一，坎农对光谱分析产生了兴趣。正是这个主题，她将投入余生。

来自恒星的电磁辐射通过棱镜或衍射光栅进行分析。它显示出被谱线分割的彩虹色，每条谱线表示一种特定的化学元素。正是谱线的强度决定了该元素在恒星中的丰度。

为了推进她的工作并获得更好的望远镜，坎农以“特殊学生”的身份进入马萨诸塞州剑桥的拉德克利夫学院。拉德克利夫学院设在哈佛学院附近，以便拉德克利夫学院的女性能够受益于哈佛教授的讲座，这些教授会过来重复他们的讲课。

在拉德克利夫学院学习后，她被聘为Edward C Pickering（1846-1919）的助理，他是哈佛学院天文台新当选的台长。他让Williamina P 威廉敏娜·弗莱明（1857-1911）负责招聘一批女性助理，即所谓的“Pickering's Women”。她于1896年将坎农加入团队。在1885年至1900年间，弗莱明挑选了20名助理来整理恒星光谱照片。Second Catalogue of Variable Stars由坎农制作，并于1907年在Annals of the Astronomical Observatory at Harvard College中作为第55卷第I部分出版。标题页上写着“由坎农 J 坎农，天文台助理，在台长Edward C Pickering的指导下。”关于Edward Pickering撰写的序言，以及坎农撰写的引言摘录，见THIS LINK。

坎农和她的工作受到Pickering的高度赞扬（被许多来源引用，例如[11]）：-

坎农是世界上唯一能如此迅速完成这项工作的人——无论男女。

当她最初开始对恒星光谱进行分类时，她可以在三年内分类1000颗恒星，但到1913年，她每小时能处理200颗。手头的工作是完成始于1885年的Henry Draper星表。该星表最终给出了225,300颗恒星的光谱分类，并于1918年至1924年间出版。目标是绘制并定义天空中每颗恒星的 photographic magnitude 约为9。在1918年出版的第一卷中，Pickering写道：-

为坎农编目所需的光谱分类工作由坎农 J 坎农于1911年10月2日开始，并于1915年9月30日基本完成。后来又从较晚的底片上取得了一些补充光谱，这些底片上的暗星此前尚未分类。已分类的光谱总数为242,093条，涉及约222,000颗恒星。北方恒星的大部分是根据安装在剑桥的8英寸坎农望远镜拍摄的709张底片分类的。同样，南方恒星的1,409张底片是用安装在秘鲁阿雷基帕的坎农望远镜拍摄的。

正是在这里，坎农将从事她日后为人所铭记的工作。弗莱明最初根据氢光谱线的强度，用从A到Q的字母对恒星光谱进行分类。然而，在天文台工作的另一位助手坎农采用了一套包含从I到XXII共22个分组的方案，并进一步根据光谱线的锐度增加了3个细分。坎农看到了一种更简便的方法。她简化了弗莱明的方案，删除并重新排列了一些字母，得出O、B、A、F、G、K、M这些类别。她还保留了P表示行星状星云，Q表示不寻常的恒星。她还利用了坎农的数字划分，引入从0到9的10个等级。

很快人们意识到，坎农的恒星分类方案是基于恒星的温度，其中顺序从最热的O到最冷的M，并确定这是一种合适的方法。因此，从1922年5月9日起，当国际天文学联合会通过该决定时，她的光谱分类被普遍采用。正是通过这种分类方法，坎农等人能够出版他们的9卷亨利·德雷珀星表。为后来成为亨利·德雷珀扩展的部分又进行了47,000次额外分类，分两卷，分别于1925年和1949年出版。仅做了微小调整，坎农实施的分类方法至今仍在使用。

她开始职业生涯后不久，她的工作和敬业精神就得到了表彰。1907年在韦尔斯利完成学业并获得硕士学位后，她于1911年接替弗莱明担任哈佛天文照片馆馆长，并于1914年成为皇家天文学会的荣誉会员。她成为第一位获得欧洲大学荣誉博士学位的女性：1922年，荷兰格罗宁根大学授予她数学和天文学博士学位。不久之后，她获得了英国牛津大学授予女性的第一个荣誉博士学位[22]：-

数百年来，牛津大学一直向科学和艺术领域的杰出男性授予荣誉学位，但第一次有女性获此殊荣，科学博士学位被授予哈佛大学天文台的坎农，以表彰她对天文学长期作出的一系列宝贵贡献，其中最主要的是完成了包含225,300颗恒星的星表——《亨利·德雷珀恒星光谱表》。……坎农于6月1日乘船前往欧洲，亲自接受了该学位。她将拜访英格兰和法国其他地区的天文学家，并将于7月在英格兰剑桥出席国际天文学联合会的三年一度会议。她是该联合会国际光谱分类委员会的成员。

1931年，National Academy of Sciences向她颁发了亨利·德雷珀奖章[14]：-

美国天文学界最显著的荣誉之一最近授予了哈佛大学天文台的坎农博士，去年11月在纽黑文举行的国家科学院会议上，她因在天体物理学方面的杰出成就而被授予亨利·德雷珀奖章。也许关于恒星的任何单项信息都不像恒星光谱知识那样渗透到天文研究的如此多不同方面。在距离、亮度、温度、大小、运动、空间分布、变化和物理结构等问题中，恒星光谱都发挥着揭示性的作用。而正是坎农过去三十年不懈的工作，才使目前关于恒星光谱的许多知识得以存在。

次年，她获得了艾伦·理查兹研究奖。她将这笔奖金转交给美国天文学会，从而得以设立坎农奖，该奖项授予在获得博士学位五年内对天文学做出杰出贡献的女性天文学家。首次颁奖于1934年进行。

1938年，她成为哈佛大学教员，被任命为威廉·克兰奇·邦德天文学讲席教授。

她的成就列表和职业轨迹对于她那个时代的女性来说 certainly 不常见。在这一行工作中，女性很少能升到助理以上，许多人每小时只挣25美分，每天工作7小时，每周工作6天。在天文台工作的另一位也做出重大贡献的女性是亨丽爱塔·勒维特，她像坎农一样，是聋人。

除了在天文台的工作之外，坎农还在天文学的发展和普及方面发挥了重要作用。她帮助促成国际学界人士之间的合作与设备交换，承担了类似天文学大使的角色。她撰写书籍和文章，提高了该领域的地位，并进而代表职业女性参加了芝加哥世界博览会。

此外，她还是全国妇女党的成员，1929年，全国妇女选民联盟将她列为12位最伟大的在世美国女性之一。她是少数几位曾被选入美国哲学学会的女性之一，也是最早成为美国天文学会官员的女性之一。

坎农于1940年正式从天文台退休，但继续进行研究，直到次年去世。

她对天文学的贡献被视为无价的，影响了许多其他问题和研究领域。它帮助天文学从单纯的观测科学进步为具有伟大理论和哲学内容的科学。在她的一生中，她发现了约300颗变星、5颗新星和1个分光双星。她一生中手动分类的恒星比任何人都多，总数约为35万颗。她不仅速度非常快，而且也很准确。

在超过40年的职业生涯中，坎农不仅提升了天文学的声誉，还帮助女性在科学界获得接受和尊重。

在患病一个月后，她于1941年4月13日在马萨诸塞州剑桥因心力衰竭去世，享年77岁，直到去世前几周她仍在继续从事天文学工作。

American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon was born on 11 December 1863 to parents Wilson Lee Cannon (1817-1905) and Mary Elizabeth Jump (1839-1893). Wilson Cannon was a Delaware shipbuilder and state senator who had four children with his first wife Ann Scotten (1818-1859), namely Henry White Cannon (born 1845), Ella Cannon (born about 1847), Mary Elizabeth Cannon (born 1850) and Hattie Hester Cannon (born 1856). Annie, the subject of this biography, was the eldest of Wilson's three children with his second wife, Mary Jump, having two younger brothers, Wilson Lee Cannon (born about 1866) and Robert Barrett Cannon (born about 1869). Mary Jump had a childhood interest in star-gazing and is credited with having initially inspired daughter Annie to pursue an interest in astronomy. Mary had also studied astronomy in a Quaker finishing school near Philadelphia.

It was with Mary's encouragement of the subject that Annie would, in the attic of their house using an old astronomy textbook, learn the constellations and identify stars. It would not be until 1898 that she would discover her first star, and confirmation of it would not come until 1905. It was also from her mother that Annie learnt household economics, something she would later put to use in the organisation of her research.

As a student from 1877 to 1880 at Wilmington Conference Academy (now Wesley College) in Dover, Delaware, she showed promise, especially in mathematics. One of the first to enrol, from 1880 Annie attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts, one of the top academic schools for women at the time. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin writes [17]:-

Not long ago she was recalling those early days [at Wellesley College], "One might have expected the girls to be very serious and earnest," she said, "but they always seemed to be laughing." And in that spirit she went through life, always endowing what seemed to many people to be an impossibly laborious and exacting occupation with joy and vitality.

She graduated in 1884 as the valedictorian with a degree in physics. Following the completion of her degree, she returned to Delaware for the following decade.

It was during this time that she developed her interest and skill at photography. She sailed to Spain in 1892 and there took photographs with her Kameret camera. For the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, her photographic work was published alongside her own prose in a pamphlet titled In the footsteps of Columbus. Here is an extract from the pamphlet to illustrate Cannon's prose:-

O Espana, home of the Cid, of Isabella the Catholic, of Columbus, thou hast charms no other land possesses! Thy Castilian valleys weave poetry into the plainest soul. Thy Andalusian mountains breathe romance and song into the very spirit. I am not an artist, but thy splendid sun has painted on my Blair films scenes more truthful than brush or pencil could portray, I am not a poet, but my Kamaret photographs sing thy praise better than song or sonnet.

For a longer extract from the pamphlet, see THIS LINK.

It was not long after this that she was rendered almost deaf by a bout of scarlet fever. It was this disability that potentially held her career back in some areas, but may also have helped her in the long-run. It is believed that Raymond Pearl of John Hopkins would not vote her in as a member of the National Academy of Sciences on account of her being deaf. Thus a female astronomer was not elected to the Academy until 1978. However, it is also thought that her deafness made it hard for her to socialise, leading her to a lifestyle whereby she could immerse herself in her work.

She neither married nor had any children. She credited her success to hard work and a lack of distractions [11]:-

I deserve no particular credit; I have concentrated on my work - that is all. I find it so fascinating and absorbing that nothing else exists. The trouble with most women is they do not stick to their work. They marry and drop it. Mind, I believe marriage is a fine thing, if a woman marries the right man. But it should not stop a woman's work any more than it does a man's.

With the death of her mother in 1893, life grew more difficult at home. Annie returned to Wellesley for graduate study in mathematics, physics and astronomy. Under the guidance of Professor Sarah Frances Whiting (1847-1927), one of the few female physicists in the United States at the time, Annie gained an interest in the spectroscopic analysis of light. It was with this subject that she would spend the rest of her life.

Electromagnetic radiation from a star is analysed by passing it through a prism or diffraction grating. It displays the rainbow of colours divided by spectral lines, each line indicating a particular chemical element. It is the strength of the line that dictates the abundance of that element in the star.

To advance her work, and access a better telescope, Cannon enrolled at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a 'special student'. Radcliffe was set up near Harvard College in order to allow the Radcliffe women to benefit from the addresses given by the Harvard professors, who would go over and repeat their lectures.

Following her studies at Radcliffe, she was hired as an assistant to Edward C Pickering (1846-1919), the newly elected director of the Harvard College Observatory. He had put Williamina P Fleming (1857-1911) in charge of hiring a staff of female assistants, so-called "Pickering's Women". She added Annie to the team in 1896. Between 1885 and 1900, Fleming selected 20 assistants to sort through photographs of stellar spectra. The Second Catalogue of Variable Stars was produced by Annie Cannon and published in 1907 in the Annals of the Astronomical Observatory at Harvard College as Volume 55 Part I. It states on the title page that it is "by Annie J Cannon, Assistant in the Observatory, under the direction of Edward C Pickering, Director of the Observatory." For the Preface written by Edward Pickering, and an Extract of the Introduction by Annie Cannon, see THIS LINK.

Annie and her work were highly praised by Pickering (quoted by many sources, for example [11]):-

Miss Cannon is the only person in the world - man or woman - who can do this work so quickly.

When she first started classifying stellar spectra, she could classify 1000 stars in three years, but by 1913, she was working on 200 an hour. The job at hand was to complete the Henry Draper Catalogue which had been started in 1885. The Catalogue eventually gave spectroscopic classifications of 225,300 stars and was published between 1918 and 1924. The goal was to map and define every star in the sky to a photographic magnitude of about 9. In the first volume, published in 1918, Pickering wrote:-

The classification of the spectra required for the Henry Draper Catalogue was begun by Miss Annie J Cannon on October 2, 1911, and practically completed September 30, 1915. Some additional spectra were taken from later plates, where faint stars had not been classified previously. The total number of spectra classified is 242,093, relating to about 222,000 stars. The greater portion of the northern stars were classified from 709 plates taken with the 8-inch Draper Telescope, mounted at Cambridge. In like manner, 1,409 plates of the southern stars were used, taken with the Bache Telescope, mounted at Arequipa, Peru.

It was here that Annie would conduct the work for which she would be remembered. Fleming had initially classified stellar spectra by letters from A to Q, according to the strength of their hydrogen spectral lines. Antonia Maury, another assistant working at the observatory, however used a scheme involving 22 groups from I to XXII, further adding 3 subdivisions based on the sharpness of spectral lines. Cannon saw an easier way. She simplified Fleming's scheme by removing and reordering some letters, to give the classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M. She also kept P for planetary nebula and Q for unusual stars. She also made use of Maury's numerical divisions, by introducing 10 steps, from 0 to 9.

Soon it was realised that Cannon's scheme of stellar classification was based upon the stars' temperatures, where the ordering is from O the hottest to M the coolest, and it was established that it was a suitable method. Her spectral classifications were thus universally adopted from 9 May 1922, when the International Astronomical Union passed the decision. It was with this classification method that Cannon et al. were able to publish their 9 volumes as the Henry Draper Catalogue. A further 47,000 additional classifications were made for what was to become the Henry Draper Extension, in two volumes, published in 1925 and 1949. With only minor adaptations, the method of classification Cannon implemented is still used today.

It was not long after she began her career that her work and work ethic were honoured. After finishing her studies at Wellesley in 1907, receiving her masters, in 1911, she succeeded Fleming as the Curator of Astronomical Photographs at Harvard, and in 1914 was made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. She became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from a European university: in 1922, Groningen University in the Netherlands awarded her a doctor's degree in mathematics and astronomy. Soon after, she was awarded the first honorary doctorate to be given to a woman by Oxford University in England [22]:-

For hundreds of years, Oxford University has been giving honorary degrees to leading men in the fields of science and art, but for the first time, a woman was so honoured when the degree of Doctor of Science was conferred on Miss Annie Jump Cannon, of Harvard College Observatory, in recognition of a long series of valuable contributions to astronomy, chief of which is the completion of a catalogue of 225,300 stars - "The Henry Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra." ... Miss Cannon sailed for Europe on June first and received the degree in person. She will visit astronomers in other parts of England and France and will attend the triennial meeting of the International Astronomical Union at Cambridge, England, in July. She is a member of the Union's International Committee on Spectral Classification.

In 1931, the Henry Draper Medal was presented to her by the National Academy of Sciences [14]:-

One of the most marked distinctions in the American astronomical world was recently conferred on Dr Annie Jump Cannon, of the Harvard College Observatory at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in New Haven last November, when she was awarded the Henry Draper Medal for outstanding achievement in astronomical physics. Perhaps no single item of information about the stars finds its way into so many different aspects of astronomical research as does the knowledge of their spectra. In problems of distance, brightness, temperature, size, motions, distribution in space, variation, and physical structure, the spectrum of a star plays a revealing role. And it is to Miss Cannon's untiring work during the past thirty years that much of the present knowledge of stellar spectra owes its existence.

In the following year she was awarded the Ellen Richards Research Prize. She turned over this money to the American Astronomical Society allowing the establishment of the Annie Jump Cannon Award, a prize given to a female astronomer, within five years of her receiving her doctorate, for her distinguished contribution to astronomy. The first award was made in 1934.

She became a member of the faculty at Harvard in 1938, appointed as William Cranch Bond, Professor of Astronomy.

Her list of achievements and career trajectory were certainly not common for a woman of her time. In this line of work, women rarely rose above the level of assistant, and many were only paid 25 cents an hour to work 7 hours a day for 6 days a week. One of the other women working in the observatory who also made significant contributions was Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who, like Annie, was deaf.

Other than her work in the observatory, Cannon played a major role in the development, and the gain in popularity, of astronomy. She helped broker partnerships and exchanges of equipment between men in the international community, assuming an ambassador-like role for astronomy. She wrote books and articles, increasing the field's status and went on to represent professional women at the World's Fair in Chicago.

Moreover, she was a member of the National Women's Party, and in 1929, the National League of Women voters listed her as one of the 12 greatest living American women. She was one of the few women ever elected to the American Philosophical Society and was one of the first women to become an officer in the American Astronomical Society.

Cannon officially retired from the observatory in 1940, but continued researching until her death the following year.

Her contribution to astronomy is seen as invaluable, impacting on many other problems and areas of research. It helped progress the science of astronomy from one of simply observation to one of great theoretical and philosophical content. During her life, she discovered about 300 variable stars, 5 novae and 1 spectroscopic binary. She manually classified more stars in a lifetime than anyone else, with a grand total of about 350,000. Not only was she very fast, but she was also accurate.

Over a career of more than 40 years, Annie not only boosted the reputation of astronomy, but also helped women gain acceptance and respect within the scientific community.

She died of heart failure following a month-long illness on 13 April 1941 in Cambridge, Massachusetts aged 77, having continued to work on astronomy until only a few weeks prior.