Cannon established the Annie Jump Cannon Award in 1933 to honor women astronomers for distinguished contributions to the field.
Around 1933, using funds from her Henry Draper Medal prize money, Annie Jump Cannon established the Annie Jump Cannon Award, to be administered by the American Astronomical Society, in recognition of distinguished contributions to astronomy by a woman.
Having spent her career navigating a scientific establishment that offered women far fewer opportunities, lower pay, and less formal recognition than their male counterparts, Cannon used her own hard-won prestige and financial award to create a lasting mechanism for honoring the achievements of women astronomers who came after her.
The award she founded remains one of the most significant and long-running honors specifically dedicated to recognizing women's contributions to astronomy, awarded annually (later biennially) to an early-career woman astronomer of North America for distinguished contributions to the field. Notable astronomers, including Vera Rubin, Margaret Burbidge, and many others, have been recipients over the decades.
By founding this award, Cannon ensured that her legacy would extend beyond her own scientific discoveries and classification systems to actively support and elevate future generations of women scientists — a deliberate, structural intervention aimed at addressing the very inequities she herself had experienced throughout her career. The award stands today as one of the most enduring symbols of her broader impact on the field of astronomy and on women's place within it.