Asteroid named after first woman at Cambridge paid to observe the heavens

An asteroid has been named in honour of a Victorian woman astronomer whose pioneering work at the University of Cambridge has been uncovered more than 100 years later.

Annie Walker spent 25 years employed as a ‘computer’ at Cambridge Observatory, where she assisted male colleagues – who at the time had the exclusive use of telescopes – with complex calculations based on their observations of the position of stars and planets.

But new research has discovered that Annie’s role at the Observatory was actually much more significant, with records showing that while continuing her work as a computer she rapidly progressed to observing stars herself, later observing all 1,585 stars in a major Appendix published in her name 16 years after she resigned. The findings confirm her to be Cambridge’s first, and Britain’s second – after Caroline Herschel – female professional observing astronomer.

Her original colleagues and mentors Professor John Couch Adams and First Assistant Andrew Graham noted her regular observing in annual reports in the late 1800s, but their successor Professor Robert Ball chose not to. But now, researchers Mark Hurn, Information Manager of the Library at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, and Roger Hutchins of Magdalen College, Oxford, have pieced together Annie’s previously unknown career using historical records, including Cambridge’s astronomical reports and publications, to clarify her career in astronomy and ensure her true historical status is established.

Mark, whose research with co-author Roger has been published in The Antiquarian Astronomer, said: “There’s something of a tragedy to this, really – in that she almost certainly never saw her work formally recognised. And that’s really been part of our motivation, to redress things and see her given the sort of recognition she deserves. We felt that we wanted to really do her justice and try and find out everything we could about her story.”

Annie, the daughter of a Suffolk corn miller, had a Biblical religious upbringing which imbued her with “a strong Protestant independence and work ethic”, according to the new research. She had an aptitude for mathematics and attended Cavendish House boarding school in Cambridge from the age of 10. In 1879, aged 15, and while waiting to sit the Local Senior mathematics exam, she gained part-time employment as a computer at Cambridge Observatory. Aware of her father’s increasing financial difficulties, the position allowed her to be partially self-sufficient.

An active supporter of girls’ education, Adams had been convinced of the “useful and affordable potential of mathematically educated women” by Annie’s predecessor Harriet Hardy, Cambridge Observatory’s first woman computer. And after spotting Annie’s promise – and after she had passed the Local Seniors examinations with distinction in mathematics – promoted her to a full-time position and began training her as an observer when she turned 18, in 1882. She was paid £10 per quarter plus a room and coal worth close to £30 per year – just enough to enable her to be independent.

As Mark and Roger’s research notes, Annie “was clearly attracted to astronomy, saw possibilities as Graham aged, and promptly sought and maximised the opportunity to observe. By doing so she transcended the norm for women calculators, transforming her own potential and career.”

Within the Cambridge Observatory Annual Reports from 1879 to 1904, Adams records in 1881-82 that: “The only change in the Observatory Staff since the last Report is that Miss Hardy left at her own desire at the end of August, and that her place has been taken by Miss Walker, who had distinguished herself in the Junior and Senior Local Examinations, and who already bids fair to become a good observer and efficient calculator.”

Annie was again recorded in the Annual Reports when her work was interrupted by an earth tremor on 22 April, 1884, when she had to stop while the wires in the eyepiece vibrated.

Although, as the new research paper notes, it was Annie’s “unusual good fortune to gain the mentoring and encouragement of both Graham and Adams”, it is also clear that she “was recruited and then retained by them on merit as a calculator. She swiftly worked her way up from routine calculations to observing, and later compiling her own catalogue, all by her own dedicated talents, and was retrospectively published and credited.”

Records show that in 1895, Annie’s salary was £90 a year with free board, and although she was officially still a computer, it made her the highest paid woman in British astronomy at that time – recognition of the vital work she was doing for Adams and Graham as an observer.

But with a change in the leadership of the Observatory came a change in Annie’s fortunes. Adams died in 1892 and was succeeded by Robert Ball as Director. Ball’s vision was of a new era in astronomy – he sought modern instrumentation and a new generation of graduate mathematician assistants with new skills. The records indicate that Annie was effectively frozen out at the Observatory as part of this shift, with no hope of promotion beyond her official computer status. In 1902, Ball appointed two women graduates as computers on lower salaries, and in 1903, at the age of 40, Annie resigned.

A few months later she emigrated to Australia, where she was reunited with her family who had relocated there almost 10 year earlier. The Electoral Roll for 1905 for the District of Flinders, south-east of Melbourne, recorded Annie as ‘astronomer’, her chosen identity, but computers there were deliberately segregated and denied access to telescopes, and there is no recorded evidence that she continued her career in astronomy in Australia. After 1910 her situation on the Roll was recorded as ‘home duties’. She died in Glen Huntly, a suburb of Melbourne, on March 2, 1940, aged 76.

The research paper pays tribute to her:  “Annie Walker’s career was defined by her mathematical ability, her independence and adaptability, enthusiasm for and aspirations in astronomy, and her loyalty and self-sacrifice to the interests of two elder mentors. In the 1880-90s she could only ever have been appointed as a computer in a British observatory but in practice she transcended that role.”

Among her most notable observational achievements at Cambridge was her Appendix of the Enlarged Edition of the Cambridge Zone Catalogue, part of the first great international effort in mapping the heavens, and entitled Revision Observations Made by Miss Walker in the Years 1896 to 1899. It was Ball’s successor Arthur Eddington who scrupulously credited her in 1919, 16 years after she left the Observatory. The Appendix alone amounts to around 10% of the whole Catalogue, it was the closest she came to a publication in her own name.

The discovery of Annie’s work on the Cambridge Zone Catalogue – for which she made about 4,800 observations in total, with each star normally being observed three times – along with her separate subsequent observations for the Ecliptic Catalogue, has, according to the researchers: “at last clarified Annie’s career in astronomy and the extent of her observing between 1882 and 1903.”

But Mark and Roger also wanted to find out as much as they could about Annie as a person – and are asking anyone who has more information about Annie, in particular photographs of her, to get in touch with the Institute of Astronomy.

“The really sad thing is that we haven’t been able to find a photograph of her,” said Mark. “But we have looked as closely as possible at all of the records we have, even down to the little remarks she made as part of her observations, about the weather conditions, such as ‘night unsatisfactory’, ‘sky thick’, and ‘bad night’. And, in particular, Roger and I were incredibly struck that she described herself as an astronomer when she arrived in Australia. She must have felt very proud of what she had done at Cambridge.”

And now, as part of the efforts to assert Annie’s place in history, Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy has secured International Astronomical Union naming for her of an asteroid in the outer main belt Themis group, now called ‘(5400) Anniewalker = 1989 CM’.

“It’s wonderful news,” said Mark. “And it’s a really good asteroid as well! One with a very low number, which means it was one of the first discovered. It feels like a very fitting, real-world, tribute to Annie – a tangible way to celebrate her. And, of course, we also hope her story will inspire the new generation of women astronomers.”

Cambridge PhD student Stephanie Buttigieg, co-chair of the Women's Network at the Institute of Astronomy, which works to celebrate women in astronomy and raise awareness about gender equality issues, said: “This is such an inspiring story. Astronomy back then would have been a typically male career, so to step up in the way Annie did would have taken a lot of courage, and it’s great that she’s finally getting the credit she deserves. As a society we have progressed in terms of gender equality, but there is still a challenge – not just in astronomy but in other scientific fields – in that girls often don’t have the confidence to go into science. Representation is so important, for women to see other women who have succeeded, and that’s why stories like this are so important.”

Words: Stephen Bevan
Main image: 'The Melbourne Observatory's Measuring Bureau', 1901. Credit: The Australasian, 1901, courtesy of Dr Toner Stevenson. The women computers, or measurers, were measuring stellar coordinates for the Carte du Ciel project. There is no evidence that Annie Walker continued her career in astronomy in Australia.

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