Antonia Maury
American astronomer (1866–1952)
Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Maury (March 21, 1866 – January 8, 1952) was an American astronomer who was the first to detect and calculate the orbit of a spectroscopic binary. She published an important early catalog of stellar spectra using her own system of stellar classification, which was later adopted by the International Astronomical Union. She also spent many years studying the binary star Beta Lyrae. Maury was part of the Harvard Computers, a group of female astronomers and human computers at the Harvard College Observatory. Dorrit Hoffleit described Maury as an "independent Renegade", suffering at the Observation for her Independence not agreeing with the way Edward Charles Pickering had them working for minimal credit.
Antonia Maury was awarded the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 1943. William Wilson Morgan, one of the developers of the MK system of stellar classification, which builds upon her work, has said that he considers Antonia Maury "for me, the single greatest mind that has ever engaged itself in the field of the morphology of stellar spectra."
Early life and education
Caetana de Paiva Pereira Maury was born in Cold Spring, New York, on March 21, 1866. She was named in honor of her maternal grandmother, Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Gardner Draper, the daughter of a physician at the court of John VI of Portugal and Charlotte of Spain. The family fled Portugal for Brazil because of the Napoleonic Wars.
Maury's father was the Reverend Mytton Maury, an amateur naturalist, a direct descendant of the Reverend James Maury and one of the sons of Sarah Mytton Maury.
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