History of Women in Science: Annie Cannon and her love of the stars

Wellesley College Science Lab 1895: Attitude Created Here.

I just finished watching an episode of Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson titled "Sisters of the Sun" on three pioneers in astrophysics: Cecilia Payne, Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Leavitt. Comments from the web were positive as the series needed to profile some important women scientist. While the episode gave a great overview, let's look a bit more at these three kick ass women.

Today's blog is all on Annie Cannon. (1863-1941)

 

 What was her education like?

A rough go at the start. She had hearing damage from fever as a young girl, but in no way did she let it stop her. Annie's interest in astronomy was first sparked as a young girl, when her mother taught her the constellations. She also realized her daughter was super brilliant and told her to go to college and major in science.

At the all women Wellesley College she pursued these interests, learning physics, astronomy, and how to make spectroscopic measurements: the colours of the stars. She then graduated from Wellesley with a degree in physics (1884), became a “special student” of astronomy at Radcliffe College (1894), M.A. from Wellesley College (1907), and was the first woman to receive a doctor of astronomy degree from Groningen University (1921). What really blew everyone away was that she was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Oxford (1925).

Why is she so kick ass? 

Because she was on the team of women who mapped and defined every star in the sky they could photograph. And she appears in a Wonder Woman Comic.

Seen in Wonder Woman #44, because she was that awesome.

Doctor Cannon became the world's expert in stellar classification, as well as developing and fine-tuning the Harvard system of classification that is studied by astronomy students today. She started by examining the bright southern hemisphere stars. To these stars she applied her system, a division of stars into the spectral classes O, B, A, F, G, K, M. Her scheme was based on the strength of the absorption lines were understood in terms of stellar temperatures, her initial classification system was rearranged to avoid having to update star catalogues.Cannon published her first catalogue of stellar spectra in 1901.

What was she like? 

 

Cause her nature meant business.

A serious scholar, very neat and tidy, and the brains of a giant. According to her own journals she was passionate about science, a serious worker, and wanted to accomplish great things with her life. She really hated living at home after she graduated the first time, so she found work at Radcliffe, then Wellesley, and then in 1896 was hired by Professor Edward Charles Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory where she spent the rest of her career until she retired in 1940.

She travelled extensively, entertained many guests, wrote letters avidly and was an accomplished pianist. She was also an advocate for women's suffrage and a member of the National Women's party.  Late in life Cannon said, “In our troubled days it is good to have something outside our planet, something fine and distant for comfort.”
 
FYI - On Active History this week is a great interview about women in engineering sciences. A must listen!

When you want to know more - head on over to this great bibliography of women in astronomy.

She's Got It: Pin Ups Before World War Two

My question today comes from the twitters online: "Were pin up girls invented during the Second World War in the1940s or did they have them in World War I?"

What your great-grandad went to war for.

As long as there has been eyes, there have been pin up girls, in art and photography. Pin ups implies the type of girl pictures up somewhere so you could look at her all the time, hence the name. That term did not come into use until the 1940s. There are many girl pictures pre-1940s however that would have caught the notice of the men in the first World War.

The concept of mass produced pictures of ladies in various states of undress were popular advertisements among burlesque performers in the 19th century. An example of this are Boudoir Cards, almost exclusively from France, that the young men in the trenches could look at. The French were not so worried about the naked female form as other countries, but they still had to be sold under the table. One very popular model was Fernade Barrey, who we know very little about. Postcards from the 1910s state that she was a courtesan who used the cards to advertise.

Another kind of pin up was Bathing Beauties, pictures and films that were focused on pretty girls who wore bathing suits. Mack Sennett, a Canadian filmmaker and founder of Keystone studios, was a major player in early comedies, giving us the pie in the face jokes and those Keystone cops running around like mad. He also in 1915 gave the world girls showing their knees:

These bathing beauties and their pictures were very popular until their end in 1928. These were mild compared to the new genre of nudist publications that surfaced. The idea of linking sex and humour, a component of pin-ups, and using drawings to illustrate their stories and jokes evolves during the early 1930's. As well, a much more graphic female body was now being drawn, compared to earlier "oh my god I saw her ankle" photos that the general population was seeing. Major artists including George Petty and Alberto Vargas created calendar girls that very soon adorned the walls of garages and workshops everywhere. 

Earl MaPherson's work late 1930s, because you really need a calendar that small...

 For some amazing pre-war pin ups, check out pinterest, oddly enough.

Medical Matriarchs: The First Female Physicians

I just read a great article on three female Western medical physicians. Anandibai Joshi, Keiko Okami, and Sabat Islambouli eventually became among the first licensed female doctors in their respective countries: India, Japan and Syria. The picture above is so beautiful. It was due to the university they attended, run by Quakers, that these ladies were able to obtain their education.

The picture of awesome.

It made me want to find out who, if history knows, was the first actual female physician in recorded history. While women played so many roles in medicine as healers, I wanted to know when the term physician was first used in regards to a female healer. So I dragged out a couple of old history of medicine books I have and found two that I found interesting.

First, the term physician is problematic, as the etymology suggests:

early 13c., fisicien "a healer, a medical practitioner," from Old French fisiciien "physician, doctor, sage" (12c., Modern French physicien means "physicist"), from fisique "art of healing," from Latin physica "natural science" Distinguished from surgeon from c.1400. The ph- spelling attested from late 14c

To use the term in the ancient world, then, is based on the translation and their understanding of what a physician would be in that culture. To many, it has to be the first documented, societal accepted (example; licensed), and formally trained woman. The female doctors of Egypt fit this description. Being a doctor in Ancient Egypt was a big deal. It was a mix of spiritual practice, various healing methods, study and hard work. It was also open to both upper class men and women. They studied as apprentices to older physicians.

Memphis and Saqqara - a resting place of an awesome woman.

Merit Ptah is believed by scholars to be the first physician ever named in history. Her name means "beloved of the God Ptah". Ptah was the god of creation, arts and fertility, so if this god was her namesake, she had a powerful ally. She lived sometime in 2700 BCE during the Old Kingdom in Egypt. All we know about Merit Ptah is from her tomb, found near Memphis in the huge burial ground of Saqqara. On her tomb, her son - a priest- wrote that she was the chief physician of the women. An impact crater on Venus is named after her, giving her even more immortality. We'll remember her long after what's their names of the cover of People this week.

Merit Ptah likeness in her sarcophagus - doctor's bag not shown.

Another probable first physician was Peseshet (ca. 2500). We only know about this female physician because there's a stela at Giza in the tomb of her son, Akhethetep, a high official. It says that says she was the overseer of doctors. She was probably a physician in her own right as well as a supervisor and administrator of an entire body of female physicians. At the time, many women worked at the medical school at Sais.

In her son's tomb, a possible picture of his mom: wonder if she had to beg for funding?

So why in this day and age do we care who the first women physicians are? The reason is that we need to celebrate anyone who bucks the norm. Most societies in the world, before and now, try to limit women's roles by denying them access to higher education, careers, and voting, using the excuse that they are just not capable or it's not womanly. Clearly these women stand out as arguments against that type of thinking, and we need to remember and honour that.

Book References I used and recommended:

Nunn, John F. Ancient Egyptian Medicine. University of Oklahoma Press: 2002.

Allen, James P. The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt. Metropolitan Museum of Art: 2005