Smyrna times. [volume] (Smyrna, Del.) 1854-1987, 1931-11-25
DELAWARE WOMAN WINS
AWARD FOR ASTRONOMY
FIRST OF SEX TO RECEIVE
ACADEMY OF SCIENCE HONOR
Henry Draper Award Given Miss
Annie Jump Cannon of Dover, for
Her Catalog of 100000 Stars


Development of girlhood fas-
cination for gazing at stars from
the attic window of her Dover
home led Miss Annie Jump Can
non to one of the highest scientific
honors at New Haven, Conn, Tues
day night of last week. She was
presented with the Henry Draper
Medal by the National Academy of
Sciences, the first woman to win
this award for scientific achieve
ment. The medal has been award
ed to twenty men in the last 45
years. Miss Cannon is an astron-
omer at Harvard Observatory. She
went there as young woman and
has accomplished one of the most
monumental astronomical tasks of
all time. She has catalogued more
than 100000 stars. The meaning
of this may be understood by re-
calling that all the seeming my
riads of visible stars number only
about 5000.
Her catalogue is based on the
spectra of the stars, which is a
Photographic analysis of the light
of each of the vast host in her cat
alogue. This analysis shows wheth-
er the stars are composed mainly
of one substance, such as hydrog-
en-, or of something else. In the
Henry Draper catalogue, where
her work is printed, she recorded
225, 300 stars. This covered every
star in the heavens brighter than
the eighth MAGNITUDE. The publ
cation required nine volumes. Since
completion of this catalogue seven
years ago, she has gone ahead with
the still fainter stars, extending
down almost to the twelfth mag
nitude. In these seven years, Miss
Cannon has added another 100000
star spectra. Her catalogue is
used by astronomers all over the
world Miss Cannon attributes her
love of astronomy to her mother,
who taught her to observe the
night skies from the attic window.
Her girlhood observations were
done with the aid Of a smoking
candle to light her astronomical
guide book Of the stars.
Miss Cannon was born in Dover,
educated in the Dover public
schools and at the Wilmington
Conference Academy Of Dover.
The Draper catalogue of the stars
has called her the foremost woman
astronomer in the work The cat
alogue has reported on her activ-
tiles as follows: In 1897 Miss An
ME j. Cannon who has had general
charge of the work of the classifi-
cation Of the stars in the Draper
catalogue from the outset, first
went to Arequipa to photograph
the stars in the southern sky, and
the results of her work were pub
lished, making a catalogue of 1122
stars. From 1911 to 1915 more
plOsI6SS was Oh Ii4C NcLo-
Iogue, as the memorial collection
by that time contained photo
graphs of stellar spectra over the
entire sky, and at present the
work under Miss Cannon has
reached a point where the cata-
logue is complete up to $4,000
stars. In Miss Cannon's office in
the Harvard Observatory an i'm
mense library bureau card cata-
logue system keeps information
about each star on file. Brought
to earth by the telescope and cam
era, their physical makeup an
alyzed by the prism, their place in
the heavens, accurately designated
by charts drawn from the photo
graphs of the different sections of
the sky, all of the known facts re-
garding them thus tabulated, each