Mary Anna Draper

Mary Anna Palmer was born in 1839, in Stonington, Connecticut, to Mary Ann Suydam and Courtlandt Palmer. Her father was a merchant and real estate investor. At his death in 1874, he left her and her three brothers a large fortune. In 1867, she married Henry Draper, a physician and professor of chemistry and physiology at University of the City of New York, now New York University. Particularly interested in astronomical spectroscopy, he was also a skilled amateur astronomer. == Career ==

Draper developed an interest in astronomy from her husband and the two took the first photographs of the spectrum of a star using a large telescope Henry built at his observatory near their summer home in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York in 1872. The couple traveled to Rawlins, Wyoming to observe a solar eclipse in 1878. During winters, the couple worked in the laboratory connected to their New York City home. For fifteen years, the Drapers worked together on observations, photography, and laboratory work. and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, whose work on Cepheid variable stars led to their use as important galactic distance indicators. Mary Anna Draper also created an award for astronomical research, the Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, and helped to found the Mount Wilson Observatory. She hosted scientific lectures and exhibitions at her home laboratory, and continued until her death of pneumonia in 1914 She also made a bequest supporting continued research at Harvard Observatory. == Notes ==