Born: 19 September 1839, United States
Died: 8 December 1914
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Anna Palmer Draper
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
While the women astronomers of the Harvard College Observatory have taken their rightful place in history, much of their work would not have been possible without the support of astronomer and philanthropist Mary Anna Palmer Draper. After her husband’s death, she established the Henry Draper Memorial fund in 1886, when she was 46. The fund initially focused on cataloging stars and stellar spectra, and the creation of the Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra, the first edition of which was published in 1890 and described 10,000 stars. Over the following decades, its volumes would expand to include hundreds of thousands of stars. This work is also what employed many of the women at the Observatory, such as Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury (Henry Draper’s niece), and Annie Jump Cannon.
The support from Draper also enabled countless important discoveries by the women at the Observatory, with insights on everything from the origins of stars to their distribution and clustering patterns to their physical characteristics. “There is hardly any branch of astronomy that has not benefited from the results of the Henry Draper Memorial. Without Mrs. Draper’s vision and generosity, one wonders how preeminent Harvard would have become,” said prominent astronomer Dorrit Hoffleit in 1991. The fund continues to provide financial support to this day.
But Draper wasn’t just a funding source honoring her deceased husband—she was actively involved in monitoring the progress and corresponding with the astronomers and the Observatory’s director. An astronomer herself who had worked with her astronomer husband, she attended Observatory events and meetings, including a 1928 trip to North Carolina to watch an eclipse. She also had an avid interest in art and archaeology, with a collection that included miniatures, rare engraved gems, Greek glass, ancient coins, amulets, rosaries, jewelry, and neoclassical furniture.
The following is excerpted from What Women Have Done for Astronomy in the United States, written by Anne P McKenney and published in Popular Astronomy, vol. 12, pp.171-182 in 1904.
Dr. Henry Draper in 1872 was the first to photograph the lines of a stellar spectrum. His investigation, pursued for many years-with great skill and ingenuity, was most unfortunately interrupted in 1882 by his death. Early in 1886 Mrs. Draper made a liberal provision for carrying on this investigation at the Harvard Observatory under the direction of Professor E. C. Pickering as a memorial to her husband. She gave several instruments and contributes $10,000 annually for the work of this department. Owing to the extensive field of investigation in this branch of astronomical physics Mrs. Draper has decided to greatly extend the original plan of work; and to have it conducted on a scale suitable to its importance. In this work Dr. Draper’s 11-inch photographiclens is used, for which Mrs. Draper has provided a new mounting and Observatory. There are also at Cambridge a 28-inch reflector and its mounting, also a 15-inch mirror, both gifts of Mrs. Draper. In the Observatory there is a central room where the comparison of charts and photographs is carried on. This is known as “The Draper Memorial Room.”