Annie Jump Cannon was born December 11, 1863 in Dover, Delaware. Her mother, Mary Jump, taught Annie about the constellations from a young age and sparked her interest in the stars. She was the eldest daughter of Delaware State Senator Wilson Cannon and Mary Jump. She studied physics and astronomy at Wellesley College, graduating in 1884. For several years afterward, 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 to continue her studies under Edward C Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay In 1896, Cannon was appointed an assistant at the Harvard Observatory, becoming one of a well-known group under the name “Women of Pickering”. There, joining Williamina PS Pleming and Antonia Maury, she devoted her energies to Pickering's ambitious project begun in 1885, consisting of recording, classifying and cataloging the spectra of all stars down to those of the ninth magnitude. Fleming had initially classified stellar spectra according to all the letters of the alphabet from A to Q, primarily based on the strength of their hydrogen spectral lines. Maury created a new diagram with twenty-two groups from I to XXIl and added three subdivisions based on the sharpness of the spectral lines. She also placed Fleming's B stars before the A stars. In a catalog of 1,122 stars published in 1901, Annie greatly simplified Fleming's scheme into classes O, B, A, F, G, K and M and she retained P for planetary nebula and Q for muscle stars. She also added numerical divisions, dividing each class into ten10 steps ranging from nine9. It was soon realized that Annie's system actually classified stars according to their temperate temperature, and her spectral classification was universally adopted. She ultimately obtained and classified the spectra of more than 225,00 stars. In 1911, Annie became curator of astronomical photographs at the Harvard Observatory. She worked with astonishing efficiency and was capable of rating up to three stars per minute. In the 1920s, Annie cataloged several hundred thousand stars down to 11th magnitude. She discovered 300 variable stars, in addition to five5 novae, a class of exploding stars. Annie received honorary degrees from the University of Delaware, Oglethorpe University, and Mount Holyoke College. She was the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1925. She received the Henry Draper Gold Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. Annie was also the first woman to hold a leadership position in the American Astronomical Society. The organization still bestows this honor for its creation, the Annie Jump Cannon Award. The prize is awarded to a distinguished astronomer early in her career. She dedicated her life to research and, unwittingly, broke down many barriers. This is why it must be said that she left behind a rich heritage which is still celebrated today in scientific circles. Having suffered from scarlet fever in her youth, Annie had become almost deaf and this is the reason why she never married (I will return to this a little later). She established the Annie Jump Cannon Prize to recognize outstanding female astronomers in North America eight years before her death, and it continues today. One reason for her astronomical skills was that she was almost completely deaf. Although a.