Appointed Curator of Astronomical Photographs at Harvard

In 1911, Annie Jump Cannon was formally appointed Curator of Astronomical Photographs at the Harvard College Observatory, a position that gave her official oversight of the observatory's vast collection of glass photographic plates documenting the spectra of hundreds of thousands of stars.

This appointment recognized Cannon's growing authority and indispensable role at the observatory, even though — like many women scientists of her era — she still lacked the formal academic rank and pay equal to her male colleagues. As curator, she was entrusted with managing and expanding the plate collection that formed the backbone of the Henry Draper Catalogue project.

Her role in this position allowed her to continue her prodigious work of classifying stars at an astonishing rate, eventually classifying the spectra of more than 350,000 stars over the course of her career — more than any other person in history, before or since. The curatorship also gave her a measure of institutional standing and administrative responsibility, foreshadowing further recognitions to come. It represented an important step in the slow, incremental process by which women at Harvard College Observatory gained greater professional legitimacy, even as full parity in salary and formal faculty rank remained decades away.