I have pretty much left American coins, but I do buy some small items now and then. I have had registry sets on the NGC site for many years. Although I have seldom been #1 for the major categories, my complete U.S. type set has been unusual because it's the only one that is 100% complete. NGC added a new coin, the American Innovation Dollar. You only need one of them to remain complete, just as it is for the State Quarters. Finding the one piece in a certification holder, at a low price, was not easy. I also decided that I wanted the piece for Delaware since I was born and raised in that state. After some searching on eBay, I found this piece in an PR-69 Ultra Cameo. The 69 grade is my favorite because there is really not much difference between it and the 70 grade, except for the price and some registry points, which mean nothing to me. So, here is my new purchase, the Annie Jump Cannon American Innovation Dollar. And here is a brief biography of MS. Cannon. Her story is quite remarkable. Annie Jump Cannon (1863 – 1941) was a pioneering astronomer in the science of classifying stars according to their characteristics. These factors include their surface temperatures and an analysis of their spectral lines which provide information as to the presence of chemical elements or molecules. Working with Edward C. Pickering, she developed the Harvard Classification Scheme which was the first serious attempt to classify stars according to their temperatures and spectral types. Annie was also a suffragette and a member of the National Women’s Party which campaigned for equal voting rights for women. Annie was born in Dover, Delaware in 1863. Annie’s mother introduced her to astronomy. Using an old textbook, they learned about the constellations by observing them from the attic of their home. Annie was a student at what is now Wesley College in Dover where she studied in biology, mathematics and chemistry. Later she studied at Wellesley College in Massachusetts where she excelled in mathematics. She graduated at the valedictorian of her class with a degree in physics. She returned to Delaware and would live there for the next 10 years. During this period, she developed her skills in photography and took a tour of Europe where she took many pictures. Upon returning home, she published a pamphlet, which incorporated her pictures and her prose, which was entitled, “In the Footsteps of Columbus.” It was handed out as a souvenir at the Columbian Exposition in 1893. Annie nearly died for scarlet fever in 1894. The disease left her almost deaf, but that didn’t stop her from continuing her education. She returned to Wellesley as an instructor and enrolled at Radcliff as a “special student” because that college had a better telescope. After earning her Master’s degree at Wellesley, Edward Pickering hired her as his assistant. It was during this extended period that Annie manually classified more stars than any one else, a total of over 350,000. Annie continued working almost until the end of her life. She died in 1941. This information and the photo of Annie Jump Cannon was taken from Wikipedia.
Like you, I am not an active collector of US coins. In fact, I have sort of drifted out of numismatics and into astronomy. I just placed an article with my local astronomy club magazine about a paper written by Cannon and two other women at Harvard, "Stars Having Peculiar Spectra. 16 New Variable Stars." I chose the paper because if its centeniary, March 1921. Looking for a picture of Cannon, et al., that has not been widely used, I found an image of the Delaware coin on Amazon. So I went to the US Mint and bought 100 to give out at star parties when we have them again. Yesterday, I bought 100 of the Hubble Telescope dollars. Over 80 women worked at the Harvard Observatory from 1880 to 1930. Some of them, like Cannon, chose to publish and pursue careers in astronomy. Most were content to reduce the data from the photographic plates and do the calculations. Among those who became more involved was Antonia Maury. She was later cited in other papers published in the Astronomische Nachrichten that laid out what we now call "The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram." I just placed a couple of classified ads in the Nantucket Inquirer and the Vineyard Gazette calling for Maria Mitchell to be placed on a new quarter in 2022-2025 Prominent Women series. Mitchell was the first person to spot a comet that had not been previously identified naked-eye. Without formal education, she became the first professor of astronomy at Vassar. She took her students to transits and eclipses in Iowa and Colorado.
