MacTutor
ANNIE SCOTT DILL MAUNDER was a professional astronomer before she married, for in 1891 she and three other young women were appointed "Lady Computers" at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and part of her work there was to examine and measure the daily sunspot photographs.
Her maiden name was Russell. She was born in 1868 in County Tyrone, Ireland, and educated in Belfast and Girton College, Cambridge, being Senior Optime in the Mathematical Tripos in 1889. In 1892 she received the special invitation, shared by very few other women, to attend all ordinary meetings of the Society, and in 1916 she was elected a Fellow.
Her work on sunspots led naturally to her friendship with Edward Walter Maunder, head of the Photographic and Spectroscopic Department in Greenwich Observatory, and also to interest in the British Astronomical Association, which he had founded in 1890: she helped in many ways in the early times of the Association, and was for many years Editor of the Journal. In 1895 they were married. Maunder was a widower and father of a family, and he was 17 years older than Annie Russell; but love on both sides was deep and true, and thei aims and interests in life were the same.
In astronomy it was an ideal partnership: they wrote many astronomical articles together, signed with both names, and one of Mr Maunder's books is dedicated to "My Wife, my Helper in this Book and in all things". The Sun continued to be a favourite subject with both: they went to five total solar eclipse together, and at one of these, in India in 1898, she secured a photograph of a longer coronal streamer than had ever been photographed before. It was with this purpose that she had carefully prepared and equipped her instrument. For as well as the help she gave her husband, much of her work was quite original: she had an alert and active mind, and her lively imagination was com-bined with a tireless zeal in seeking evidence and working out details before presenting any conclusions. In 1907 May her paper on "An Apparent Influence of the Earth on the Numbers and Areas of Sunspots in the Cycle 1889-1901", which was based on a study of Greenwich Results for these twelve years, was published in Monthly Notices, being communicated by the Astronomer Royal; in the same month she gave the gist of this long paper to a meeting of the B.A.A. It is very full and thorough and carefully argued; and although an Earth effect can scarcely be more than "apparent", the fact of a decrease in spot frequency as they pass from east to west of the Sun's disk viewed from Earth has never since been disproved or satisfactorily assigned to any other cause. She showed in the paper that it was very difficult of explanation by a changing presentation of the spots to Earth as they passed over the Sun's disk, also that it was supported by the new fact that spots were more numerous when the Sun was in apogee.
The origin of the 48 ancient constellations was also a very interesting problem to the Maunders. He had discussed it in The Observatory and the Journal of the B.A.A. and elsewhere, in 1898, stressing the point formerly observed by Proctor that the extreme limit in southern latitude of these figures gives a clue to the latitude of their inventors, and also to the time at which they observed, since the South Pole must then have been at the centre of the circle which surrounds the southernmost of the figures. She carried the argument further in The Observatory of 1912 and 1913, and finally in The Observatory of 1936 suggesting there that the inventors were some Indo-European race of the late Stone Age who were sailors rather than agriculturists and had domesticated the horse, their date being about 2900 B.C.
In 1928, to her great grief, Mr Maunder died, but she continued her work alone in astronomy and kindred subjects, one of which was chronology: Eddington once referred to her an inquiry on the date of the Nativity, as to an authority on this subject. Only recently did she find it impossible to attend astronomical meetings, or to deal with her many files and notes and letters from correspondents all over the world. Her strength failed and she passed away after a very short illness on 1947 September 15.
She was elected a Fellow of the Society on 1916 November 10.
M. A. EVERSHED.
Her maiden name was Russell. She was born in 1868 in County Tyrone, Ireland, and educated in Belfast and Girton College, Cambridge, being Senior Optime in the Mathematical Tripos in 1889. In 1892 she received the special invitation, shared by very few other women, to attend all ordinary meetings of the Society, and in 1916 she was elected a Fellow.
Her work on sunspots led naturally to her friendship with Edward Walter Maunder, head of the Photographic and Spectroscopic Department in Greenwich Observatory, and also to interest in the British Astronomical Association, which he had founded in 1890: she helped in many ways in the early times of the Association, and was for many years Editor of the Journal. In 1895 they were married. Maunder was a widower and father of a family, and he was 17 years older than Annie Russell; but love on both sides was deep and true, and thei aims and interests in life were the same.
In astronomy it was an ideal partnership: they wrote many astronomical articles together, signed with both names, and one of Mr Maunder's books is dedicated to "My Wife, my Helper in this Book and in all things". The Sun continued to be a favourite subject with both: they went to five total solar eclipse together, and at one of these, in India in 1898, she secured a photograph of a longer coronal streamer than had ever been photographed before. It was with this purpose that she had carefully prepared and equipped her instrument. For as well as the help she gave her husband, much of her work was quite original: she had an alert and active mind, and her lively imagination was com-bined with a tireless zeal in seeking evidence and working out details before presenting any conclusions. In 1907 May her paper on "An Apparent Influence of the Earth on the Numbers and Areas of Sunspots in the Cycle 1889-1901", which was based on a study of Greenwich Results for these twelve years, was published in Monthly Notices, being communicated by the Astronomer Royal; in the same month she gave the gist of this long paper to a meeting of the B.A.A. It is very full and thorough and carefully argued; and although an Earth effect can scarcely be more than "apparent", the fact of a decrease in spot frequency as they pass from east to west of the Sun's disk viewed from Earth has never since been disproved or satisfactorily assigned to any other cause. She showed in the paper that it was very difficult of explanation by a changing presentation of the spots to Earth as they passed over the Sun's disk, also that it was supported by the new fact that spots were more numerous when the Sun was in apogee.
The origin of the 48 ancient constellations was also a very interesting problem to the Maunders. He had discussed it in The Observatory and the Journal of the B.A.A. and elsewhere, in 1898, stressing the point formerly observed by Proctor that the extreme limit in southern latitude of these figures gives a clue to the latitude of their inventors, and also to the time at which they observed, since the South Pole must then have been at the centre of the circle which surrounds the southernmost of the figures. She carried the argument further in The Observatory of 1912 and 1913, and finally in The Observatory of 1936 suggesting there that the inventors were some Indo-European race of the late Stone Age who were sailors rather than agriculturists and had domesticated the horse, their date being about 2900 B.C.
In 1928, to her great grief, Mr Maunder died, but she continued her work alone in astronomy and kindred subjects, one of which was chronology: Eddington once referred to her an inquiry on the date of the Nativity, as to an authority on this subject. Only recently did she find it impossible to attend astronomical meetings, or to deal with her many files and notes and letters from correspondents all over the world. Her strength failed and she passed away after a very short illness on 1947 September 15.
She was elected a Fellow of the Society on 1916 November 10.
M. A. EVERSHED.
Annie Scott Dill Maunder's obituary appeared in Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 108:1 (1948), 48-49.