Ventura County Astronomical Society | 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage VCAS Celebrates the Women of Astronomy

Annie Jump Cannon,

was an American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. Wikipedia

Born: December 11, 1863, Dover, DE

Died: April 13, 1941, Cambridge, MA

Known for: Stellar classification

Beth A. Brown,

(July 15, 1969 – October 5, 2008) was a NASA astrophysicist and the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan’s Department of Astronomy. Brown joined NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as a post-doctoral research associate with the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. She became a post-doctoral research associate for the National Space Science Data Center in 2001. She held several increasingly more prominent positions in astronomy before she died from a pulmonary embolism.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt,

was an American astronomer. A graduate of Radcliffe College, she worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a “computer”, tasked with examining photographic plates in order to measure and catalog the brightness of stars. Wikipedia

Born: July 4, 1868, Lancaster, MA

Died: December 12, 1921, Cambridge, MA

Nationality: American

Known for: Leavitt’s law: the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variables