Born on December 11, 1863, in Dover, Delaware, Annie Cannon was the daughter of a state senator. She was one of the first women from Delaware to attend a university, which she did in 1880 when she entered Wellesley college in Massachusetts. It was during her studies at Wellesley that her interest in stellar spectroscopy was inspired, the subject for which she would later earn international recognition. It was not until 1894, however, a decade after her graduation from Wellesley, that Annie Cannon returned for graduate study in astronomy and physics, first at Wellesley and, in 1895, at Radcliffe. During the decade she was away from school, she was stricken with scarlet fever, which left her almost completely deaf.
In 1896, Miss Cannon was appointed to the staff of the Harvard College Observatory. The Harvard spectral classification system had been first developed by Edward C. Pickering, Director of the Observatory, around the turn of the century using objective prism spectra taken on improved photographic plates. It was in conjunction with Pickering that Annie Cannon was to further develop, refine, and implement the Harvard system. Her keen visual memory as well as her patience and discipline were the qualities that made possible her contributions to astronomy for which she is recognized.
When Miss Cannon was appointed curator of astronomical photographs at the observatory in 1911, she began the vitally important project in stellar demography of classifying stars down to the ninth magnitude, using objective prism plates taken by Pickering. These stars later proved to number a quarter of a million. The speed with which Miss Cannon worked was phenomenal. She classified something on the order of 5000 stars per month between 1911 and 1915. The fruits of her work were published between 1918 and 1924 in nine volumes. Known as the The Henry Draper Catalogue, her work continues to be used by astronomers worldwide. Miss Cannon continued to publish the results of her classification work throughout the remainder of her career.
Between 1918 and 1937, Annie Cannon was awarded six honorary doctoral degrees, but the one that probably meant the most to her came in April of 1925, when Oxford University made her the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from that illustrious institution. She received additional honors for her pioneering work in the field of astrophysics. In 1931, the National Academy of Sciences made her the first woman to be awarded the Draper Gold Medal for her scientific accomplishments. And in 1932, Miss Cannon donated the cash portion of an honorary prize to the American Astronomical Society to establish a prize honoring women for distinguished contributions to astronomy.
In addition to her distinguished career, Miss Cannon lived a life full of travel, socializing, letter writing, and music, especially the opera. Always captivated and perpetually thrilled by what she learned of the cosmos, Annie Cannon noted in those turbulent years during World War II shortly before her death in 1941: "In troubled days it is good to have something outside our planet, something fine and distant for comfort."