American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon died #OTD in 1941.
Cannon developed a system of stellar classification based on spectral characteristics, which became known as the Harvard Classification Scheme (she was one of the "Harvard Computers"). She classified hundreds of thousands of stars, organizing them by temperature and spectral characteristics. Her work laid the foundation for our understanding of stellar evolution and the composition of stars.
PHaEDRA is an initiative by the Wolbach Library, in collaboration with many partners, to catalog, digitize, transcribe, & enrich the metadata of over 2500 logbooks and notebooks produced by Women Astronomical Computers and other early astronomers at the Harvard College Observatory. Our goal is to ensure that this remarkable set of items, created by a remarkable group of people, is as accessible and useful as possible.
One of Cannon's most significant contributions was the creation of the Henry Draper Catalogue, which listed the spectral classifications of nearly 400,000 stars. She also developed the mnemonic device "Oh, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me" to help remember the spectral classes: O, B, A, F, G, K, M.
In 1925, she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.
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