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The long double line of scarlet-robed doctors who ‘treated’ at this year’s brilliant commemoration in Oxford, from Wadham, the Vice Chancellor’s College, to the Sheldonian Theater was, from a feminist point of view, less interesting because of its inclusion of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Jellicoe, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, as of the one event that it contained a woman.
Miss Annie Cannon, the eminent Harvard Observatory astronomer, to whom Oxford conferred an honorary doctorate of science on June 10, marched in procession with his host, Professor Turner, Oxford professor of astronomy Savilian, and the crowd that had come to watch the Prime Minister found their sensation instead in this startling precedent of a woman in a procession devoted to academic masculinity and distinguished “male” service.
In honor of her visit to England, Professor Turner gave a talk in Sommerville on Miss Cannon’s “invaluable contribution to astronomy” and linked her to the wonderful tradition created by Marie Somerville – after whom the famous Oxford Women’s College is named – and Caroline Herschel, whose gold medal is now in Girton’s possession.
Today, Dr. Annie Cannon continues the work of her two illustrious precursors. Using the spectrum, she classified 25,000 stars in the northern and southern hemispheres according to their heat as well as substance, distance and speed. He stayed for Professor Eddington to order these data accumulated by his theory that the nebula evolves from a low temperature to a high temperature to a low temperature. Thus the goal of William and Caroline Herschel was achieved, and the life of the nebula traced like the life of a planet.
This is a modified version.
