“Wonder Women of History: Annie Jump Cannon”
BY TIM HANLEY American astronomer whose extensive cataloguing helped lead to the development of contemporary stellar classification. 3ANNIE JUMP CANNON As profiled In “Wonder Women of History”
BIG HISTORY PROJECTANNIE JUMP CANNON2If you’ve not yet seen Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, you are seriously missing out. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is everybody’s favorite scientist, and the show is both gorgeous-ly shot and does a fantastic job explaining big scientific concepts. It’s a lot of fun to watch.Last weekend, Cosmos profiled Annie Jump Cannon, famous for counting and classify-ing thousands of stars. It was great to see Cosmos spotlight female scientists, and it reminded me that Annie Jump Cannon was profiled decades ago in Wonder Woman as part of the regular “Wonder Women of History” feature.In the Golden Age, each issue of Wonder Woman profiled a notable historical woman in a 3-4 page strip. There were several astronomers spotlighted, including Cannon, Caro-line Herschel, and Maria Mitchell; the latter two are famous for their work in comets. In Wonder Woman #33, dated January 1949, Annie Jump Cannon was the focus of “Won-der Women of History” in a strip written by Julius Schwartz, penciled by Paul Rein-man, and inked by Bernard Sachs. Imagine how cool it must have been to get a comic with several Wonder Woman sto-ries and a strip like this in each issue, and all for a dime. Imagine as well, with so many male superheroes dominating the newsstands and men dominating every level of society generally, how inspirational it must have been for young girls in the 1940s to not just have Wonder Woman as a hero, but also scores of real life women to look up to.“Wonder Women of History” was a fantastic feature; it profiled a wide array of women, and was drawn by some of the Golden Age’s best artists. I’d love to see DC collect the strips in one volume. They’re a great piece of comic book history that’s gone forgotten for far too long, and I think that people would really enjoy them and learn a lot.Page 1 of Wonder Women of History, Wonder Woman #33 – Annie Jump Cannon
BIG HISTORY PROJECTANNIE JUMP CANNON3Page 2 of Wonder Women of History, Wonder Woman #33 – Annie Jump CannonPage 3 of Wonder Women of History, Wonder Woman #33 – Annie Jump Cannon
BIG HISTORY PROJECTANNIE JUMP CANNON4About the AuthorTim Hanley is a comic book historian, and he blogs about Wonder Woman at Straitened Circumstances and also writes about women in comics at Bleeding Cool in his monthly “Gender-crunching” column. He has a Master’s degree in history from Dalhousie Uni-versity, writing his honours thesis on DC Comics and the 1950s juvenile de-linquency crisis and his Master’s thesis on Wonder Woman and feminism. He’s kind of a nerd, really.SourceStraitened Circumstances https://than-ley.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/annie-jump-cannon-featured-on-last-weeks-cosmos-as-profiled-in-wonder-women-of-history/Cover image: Annie Jump Cannon, head-and-shoulders portrait, left profile. Library of Congress. Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/in-dex.php?curid=9431030Images from Wonder Women of History, Wonder Woman #33 – Annie Jump Cannon.