The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science

3. To Embrace or Decline Marriage and Family:Annie Jump Cannon and the Women of the Harvard Observatory, 1880–1940

If all the ladies should know so much about spectroscopes and cathode rays, who will attend to the buttons and breakfasts? —Senior European astronomer to Sarah Whiting, chair of astronomy at Wellesley, 1880s–1890s1 While we cannot maintain that in everything woman is man’s equal, yet in many things her patience, perseverance and method make her his superior. Therefore, let us hope that in astronomy, which now affords a large field for women’s work and skill, she may, as has been the case in several other sciences , at last prove herself his equal. —Williamina Paton Fleming, “A Field for Women’s Work in Astronomy,” World Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 We work from morn ’till night For computing is our duty We’re faithful and polite, And our record book’s a beauty; With Brelle and Causs, Chauvinet and Pierce, We labor hard all day; We add, subtract, multiply, divide, We never have time to play. —From the parody Observatory Pinafore, written by women computers of the Harvard Observatory2 in 1931, a journalist for the camden daily courier heralded the recent recipient of the Henry Draper Medal for research in astronomical physics. For the first time in the history of the prize, it was a woman, the ebullient Annie Jump Cannon, curator of photographic plates at the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard University. That a woman would be so honored was astounding. Since most science fields had been professionalized toward the end of the nineteenth century, women had found themselves relegated to teaching posts at women’s colleges, or they lingered imperceptibly at the lower echelons of the promotional To Embrace or Decline Marriage and Family: Annie Jump Cannon and the Women of the Harvard Observatory, 1880–1940 3 88 89 ladder as lab technicians, or they quietly worked as assistants to husbands in the few home labs that remained. Without PhDs, they could not advance in rank or title; most could not even put their names on papers they researched and wrote themselves. Annie Cannon was an anomaly to be sure, yet this journalist assured readers that thirty-five years in science had not tarnished her womanliness : she was affable, unassuming, and hospitable to guests in her home and the observatory both, and doted on children. She seemed to know her place in the natural order. She “would have been a first-rate housewife,” he assured readers, but instead “took up light housekeeping among the stars”: “Oh those untidy men folks,” we can hear Miss Cannon say as she took up astronomy. “Let’s get some order in this kitchen, I mean heaven.” So she made her life work the cataloguing of the stars. Hundreds of thousands of them she “dusted off,” as it were, and put back into their right places. . . . Housewives may be a little weak on astronomical physics. But they will understand just how Miss Cannon felt. Those heavens simply HAD to be tidied up.3 Later in the century, sociologists would theorize that a child’s scientific proclivitiescome from theempirically minded patriarch of the family , but that was not the case with Annie Cannon. Her mother was the parent who opened the trapdoor to the roof of their Delaware home so that they might gaze at stars. Elizabeth Cannon encouraged her daughter to study mathematics, chemistry, and biology at Wellesley College, and eventually to study physics under MIT-trained astronomer Sarah Whiting. She was pleased when her daughter returned to Wellesley and Radcliffe for postgraduate courses, and ultimately accepted her daughter ’s choosing vocation over marriage. At thirty-four, Annie Cannon excused herself irrevocably from a traditional life as wife and mother by accepting a post at Harvard’s astronomical observatory.4 Thirty-five years later the Daily Courier lauded her as a great scientist , rather than mocking her spinster’s status. The praise was strange, considering that both men and women thought disinterested objectivity , the hallmark of the modern scientific expert, was achievable by men alone. In Cannon’s day, anthropology, botany, and nutritional science seemed appropriate disciplines for women “assistants,” since these fields could be viewed as germane to homemaking.5 So why would to embrace or decline marriage and family 90 anyone extol Cannon’s womanly traits in astrophysics—a field so virile that women would be denied access to telescopes in the nation’s observatories until the 1960s? Within this male-dominated field was a domain in which presumably...