Astronomer Annie Scott Dill (née Russell) Maunder - Short v1

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Northern Irish Astronomer Annie Scott Dill Maunder (née Russell), became a renowned observer and photographer of solar eclipses, and an expert in sunspots was born at the

Manse (no longer there) in Strabane, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland on 14 April 1868 to parents William Andrew Russell (b.1824 d.1899) and Wiliam's second wife Hessy Nesbitt Dill (b.est.1811 & 1847 d.?). William was the minister of the 2nd Presbyterian Church in Strabane from 1846 until 1882. he married Hessy in 1860.

Hessy was the daughter of the Reverend John Dill (b.1802 d.1841) Presbyterian Minister of Carnmoney, County Antrim who married his cousin, Elizabeth Dill (b.1806 d.1862) in 1828. Elizabeth was the eldest of the four daughters of Rev. Samuel Dill (b.1772 d.1845) born in the barony of Kilmacrennan, Co. Donegal, Minister of Donaghmore, Co. Donegal and Hester (nee Foster) Dill (b.1775 d.1863).

William retired in 1882, though he is listed as Senior Trustee and Secretary of the Board of Strabane Academy School in 1883, around the time Annie was ready for her secondary education.

 

Annie was a member of a large family since her father had two sons from his first marriage on 31 Oct 1850 to Mary Dill Campbell (b.? d.15 Feb 1856). Mary was the 2nd daughter of Samuel Campbell, Glenleary. William also had two sons and two daughters with his second wife Hessy.

 

Siblings of William & Mary Dill (nee Campbell) Russell

1. Samuel Marcus Russell (b.1856 d.1917)

2. another son?

 

Siblings of William & Hessy Nesbitt (nee Dill) Russell

1. James Alexander Russell (b.c.1853 d.?)

2. Elizabeth Russell (b.c.1864 d.?)

3. Hester Dill Russell (b.1866 d.1938)

4. Annie Scott Dill Russell (b.1868 d.1947)

5. John Dill Russell, M.D. (b.1873 d.1955)

 

Samuel Marcus Russell (b.1856 d.1917), older half-brother of Annie Maunder nee Russell, was born 10 February 1856 in Strabane, Co. Tyrone, was educated at Queen's University Belfast (BSc 1877, MSc 1878). His career was spent in China, where he served as professor of mathamatics and astronomy at Imperial College in Beijing, and later worked for the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. Remembered for his adaptation of W. H. Murray's system of teaching Mandarin Chinese to the blind, and a study of a lunar eclipse of the Zhou dynasty. He married Clara Elizabeth Goode (b.1859 d.26 August 1949) on 28 January 1899 after she travelled as a missionary to Peking. Both were erroneously reported as having been killed in the Boxer Rebellion, Beijing in July 1900. Samuel wrote "The Story of the Siege in Peking" (1901). They later lived at Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Canada.

 

John Dill Russell (b.1873 d.1955) was a general surgeon, he received his early education in Ireland and then went to the City of London School. He studied medicine at University College Hospital, won class medals, and was awarded the Filliter exhibition in pathological anatomy and pathology. In 1896 he obtained the London MB with first-class honours and the gold medal in medicine and honours in forensic medicine.

After graduation, Dill Russell was demonstrator of anatomy and obstetric assistant at University College Hospital, and in 1898-99 was senior surgical officer at the South Devon and East Cornwall Hospital, Plymouth. In 1900 he entered general practice at Finchley and soon built up a large practice; he did a good deal of operative work, satisfying his surgical skill and inclination. He became surgeon to the Metropolitan Police and to the Finchley and Hornsey Cottage Hospital, and an examiner and lecturer under the LCC. From 1902 Dill Russell was honorary secretary of the North London branch of the BMA and of the Hampstead division in 1904. During the first world war he served in the RAMC, and in 1920 accepted the post of divisional medical officer under the Ministry of Health, which involved travelling all over the country.

Later he became a senior medical officer in Whitehall until his retirement in 1939. His home was 41 Gayton Road, Harrow. During the second world war he did valuable work on medical boards. In 1902 Dill Russell married Charlotte Evangeline, daughter of Dr Frederick Wimberley; they celebrated their golden wedding in 1952. They had one daughter and five sons, two of whom were killed in the 1939-45 war. Two surviving sons followed their father into medicine, Scott Dill-Russell and Patrick Dill-Russell. John Dill Russell, was a modest man of great integrity, who died on 21 February 1955 aged 81. His wife died aged 81 on 5 March 1957 at their home in Wigtoft, Horsell Rise, Woking.

 

Hester Dill Russell (later Smith), studied medicine under Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (b.1836 d.1917) at the London School of Medicine for Women. Hester qualified as the first exhibitioner in the final MB examination in 1891, she became a medical missionary in India and later married in 1898, another medical missionary, Colonel Henry “Jullundur” Smith (b.1859 d.1948) who was born Tullyvernan, Clogher, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

 

Rev. George Peter Maunder

Walter was born on 12 April 1851 in 5, Chesterfield (now Chesterton) Street, St Pancras, London, the youngest son, and 5th of seven siblings. His father was Rev. George Peter Maunder (b.1813 d.1878) and his mother Mary Anne Frid (b.1817 d.1878). Following his father's retirement from the army they settling in Bedminister, Bristol.

George was origionally an apprentive to a printer in Bristol, however he showed a marked preference for the church and became an ordained Wesleyan Methodist minister. While serving in Southwark he struck up a friendship with Thomas Frid (b.? d.?) who's eldest daughter Mary Anne he married on 2 July 1840.

Despite his known tendency to exhaust himself, having raised a considerable sum from supporters in London, in the early summer of 1878, George set about a punishing schedule to raise funds to build a new city centre church, visiting Liverpool, Southport and Manchester. Not stinting on his duties when he returned, his health broke down and despite hopes that he would recover with rest and medical care, he died on 21st June 1878 at the manse, then on Blackhall Road.

A beautiful memorial stained glass window, dedicated to George, was installed above the balcony in the Wesley Memorial Church, Oxford, with funds raised by his ‘Temperance friends throughout England’. Sadly George died before the opening of the church in late 1878.

 

Rev. George & Mary Anne's Siblings:

1. Thomas Frid (b.1841 d.1935) Leamington

2. Anne Eliza (b.1843 d.1912) born Manchester

3. George William (b.1845 d.1928) born Manchester

4. Henery Arthur (b.1848 d.1850) born Sheffield?

5. Edward Walter (b.1851 d.1928) born Middlesex

6. Mary Ann (b.1854 d.1933) born Middlesex

7. Ellen Beatrice (b.1856 d.1946) born Leeds

 

Edward Walter Maunder

Walter held some deep egalitarian convictions, he starting in 1871, and supporting himself financially through a job as a bank clerk, he studied at King's College in London, but never graduated. In November 1873, after an earlier unsuccesful attempt, Maunder secured a position at Greenwich Royal Observatory, then led by the strong-minded and micro-managerial Astronomer Royal, George Biddell Airy (b.1801 d.1892). Maunder was hired as photographic and spectroscopic assistant, primarily in the solar observing program, then recently transferred from Kew Observatory to Greenwich. Elected to the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in 1875, he soon began lobbying the Society for acceptance of

women, but in vain. Finally giving up on the RAS, in 1890 he founded the British Astronomical Association (BAA), a non-elitist organization open to women, as well as interested amateurs of any social class. As a deeply religious man he wrote numerous scholarly essais on the Bible, sometimes with an astronomical flavor.

In 1875 he married Edith Hannah Bustin (b.1852) Edith died of tuberculosis in 1888, leaving Maunder with six children: four sons (one, Walter Anthony who died in infancy) and

two daughters.

 

Walter & Edith's Siblings:

1. George Harvard (b.1877 d.1945)

2. Edith Augustus (b.1878 d.1966)

3. Irine Matilda (b.1880 d.1977)

4. Walter Anthony (b.1884 d.1885)

5. Edward Arthur (b.1886 d.1966)

6. Henry Ernest (b.1888 d.1977)

 

On 28 December 1895, aged 45 walter re-married, Annie Scott Dill Russell, aged 27, his assistant at Greenwich. They married in a Presbyterian church in Greenwich. Walter and

Annie had no children together, however Walter had five children from a previous marriage. Annie was 17 years younger than Walter and only nine years older than his oldest

son. The oldest of the children was 21 and the youngest was 7.

 

Walter's interest in astronomy, and solar astronomy in particular, was fired already at a young age by a naked-eye observation of a large sunspot group in February 1866.

By 1881 Walter was in charge of the solar program at Greenwich, and could lead his own research program. He focused primarily on the studies of sunspots and solar activity,

its relationship to geomagnetic activity and earth's environment, often in the face of stubborn skepticism from the scientific establishment, and most notably Lord Kelvin,

William Thomson (b.1824 d.1907).

 

Together with his second wife Annie, he publicised and extended some historical research work of earlier solar astronomers, most notably Gustav Spöer (b.1822 d.1895), on the anomalous state of low solar activity in the second half of the seventeenth century, an episode now known as the Maunder Minimum. Annie remained his primary scientific

partner up to his death on 21 March 1928.

 

Annie Maunder

Annie’s early education would have been at the 1st Strabane Girls’ Presbyterian School, Meetinghouse Street. The school was built in 1896 to predomanently catered for the

presbyterian community however, it was attended by many other denominations. Primarily a girls school but boys up to 7 and 8 were also taught there. Annie would have been

taught by Miss Mary and Jane Henderson, the 1st principal was Miss Martha S. Black (the school was locally known as the Black’s School after the principal) followed by Miss Young then Mrs Fleming who became the headmistress in 1957 and was there until school closed in 1964. Thereafter pupils went to the Strabane Controlled (County) Primary School on the Derry Road.

 

Annie and her sister Hester received their secondary education at the Ladies Collegiate School in Belfast, which later became Victoria College. The school was founded in 1859 by Mrs Margaret Byers (b.1832 d.1912) who ironically took a leading role in campaigns to secure equality for women within the Irish education system.

 

Annie excelled at school and won a prize in the 1886 Irish Intermediate examinations, she was described as having an active mind and a "lively imagination combined with a

tireless zeal in seeking evidence and working out details before presenting any conclusions.” In the same year she was offered and accepted a three-year open scholarship costing £35 annually to enrol at Girton College, Cambridge to study the Mathematical Tripos, the world's most competitive mathematical course. She and Alice Everett (b.1865 d.1949) were two out of the 29 women at Girton College who passed in that year.

 

Trinity College, Dublin only admitted men, however the Royal University of Ireland did allow women to sit its examinations. Annie might have been expected to take a degree there, but was dissuaded by the experience of Alice Everett, who sat the first year scholarship examination in science in 1884 and was ranked first. However, high-scoring students would usually be offered a scholarship, but the university's administration decided that women were not eligible for awards, so Everett decided to continue her studies at Girton College, Cambridge.

 

For a year, Annie worked as a mathematics mistress at Jersey Ladies' College in Saint Helier on the island of Jersey.

 

On 14 April 1890, Everett took up a job at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich (ROG). The Astronomer Royal, William Christie (b.1845 d.1922), had overseen an expansion in the observatory's facilities, but had struggled to persuade the government to hire more assistants. Instead, he was given funding for additional “computers”, an entry-level position. Christie made this money stretch further by creating a new role of “lady computer”. This allowed him to circumvent civil service regulations making it difficult to hire women, and to employ overqualified female candidates on wages normally offered to schoolboys. Although the salary (£4 per month, roughly £600 today), it was only half what she earned teaching. In January 1890, Annie was told about a position at Greenwich that was available by her good friend Alice Everett, Annie was immediately interested in the job. She persuaded Robert Stawell Ball (b.1840 d.1913), the Royal Astronomer of Ireland, to write a letter supporting her application, she was offered a position at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich by the Chief Assistant, Herbert Hall Turner (b.1861 d.1930), however being successful, Annie attempt to renegotiate her salary, which was less than a quarter of the equivalent male wage. Yet the lure of putting her mathematical training to a practical scientific purpose was too strong, so she threw herself into her work, qualifying to use observing telescopes and noting the changing size and position of sunspots. Through work and shared religious commitment, Annie bonded with Edward Walter Maunder, the head of photography at Greenwich who was an enthusiastic supporter of female astronomers. In 1886, Elizabeth Isis Pogson (b.1852 d.1945) had been nominated as a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), but withdrew when a barrister advised that the use of "he" and "him" in the society's constitution was intended to exclude women.

 

In 1892, Walter nominated the names of Annie Russell and fellow Greenwich astronomer Alice Everett and Elizabeth Brown (b.1830 d.1899) to become fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), with the "him" on their application forms crossed out and replaced with "her". One member quipped that the nominations would make the RAS meetings more social," and all we shall require is a piano and a fiddle", while another challenged the legality of any election. However, they failed to gain enough of the popular vote in a secret ballot and were rejected. The RAS had long argued that since the pronoun "he" was used in the charter it excluded women. Walter, a council member, decided in 1890 to establish the British Astronomical Association (BAA), a more egalitarian body that admitted women, so Annie, Alice Everett and Elizabeth Brown all joined the amateur BAA.

 

In 1897, Annie received a grant from Girton College to acquire a short-focus camera with a 1.5-inch lens which she took on expeditions. The lens used was made by T.R. Dallmeyer, a famous London optician. She used this camera to photograph the outer solar corona from India in 1898. With this camera she captured the longest ray, coronal streamer, seen at the time with her own equipment that she operated and designed herself. Her camera was designed with a large field-of-view for photographing the Milky Way, which made it possible to look for faint and distant corona. To take photos of the eclipse, Annie took a series of photographs with her camera and ranging exposures during the couple minutes of the totality of the eclipse. Her photographs recorded a stream from the sun that extended over 10 million kilometres.

 

When Annie married Walter Maunder in 1895, she was obliged to resign from Greenwich, due to restrictions on married women working in public service so she turned her efforts to

the BAA, editing its journal and taking part in several eclipse observations. She also continued working closely with Walter, authoring several papers on sunspots. In 1908, they published an astronomy book aimed at a popular audience, "The Heavens and their Story". In the introduction, Walter explained that, despite being co-authored, it was “almost wholly the work of my wife”. Finally, in 1916 the RAS ended its ban on woman fellows and Walter successfully nominated his wife as its first female fellow.

 

The two continued to collaborate, and Annie accompanied Walter on solar eclipse expeditions. Walter was in charge of financing and organizing expeditions through the National

Eclipse Committee of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Annie took part in five eclipse expeditions with the BAA, her first in 9 August 1896 Vadsøya, Norway. For the

expedition to Talini Village, India in 22 January 1898, Walter was not a designated member of the expedition, so he and Annie went on their own.

Annie, along with other members of the BAA, travelled to Algiers to observe the total eclipse of the sun on 28 May 1900. The Maunders went on a solar expedition to Mauritius

for the eclipse of 18 May 1901 in which Annie was not included as an official observer (though her husband Walter was) so she had to pay her own way. Since Annie was not an official observer, she decided to go to a separate location to photograph the eclipse. Of the two Mauritius corona photographs that were published, one was Walter's and the

other was Annie's. The only expedition in which Annie's expenses were paid, was the the eclipse on 30 August 1905 to Labrador and Newfoundland, Canada, where the Maunders were invited and sponsored by the Canadian Government.

 

In November 1894, Annie was made editor of the Journal of the BAA by her husband who was president at the time. She kept this position for 35 years.

 

Annie's description of the direction and motion of the particles in the corona which she observed in India in 1898, describes the now accepted Parker Spiral structure of the solar wind. Annie, along with other members of the BAA, travelled to Algiers to observe the total eclipse of the sun on 28 May 1900. The members of the association that accompanied her were Mary Acworth Evershed (pen name M.A. Orr, b.1867 d.1949), Lilian Martin-Leake (b.1867 d.1962), and Catherine Octavia Stevens (b.1865 d.1959). Annie photographed the corona and observed "plume" like rays, coining the term which is still used today.

 

The book, "The Heavens and their Story" which was co-written by the Maunder's was published in 1908, and contains eight coloured plates and 38 astronomical photographs, first

considers the movements of the sun, moon, stars and planets before looking in more details at the facets of the sun, including the sun’s surface and sun spots although Walter

acknowledged that it was 'almost wholly the work of his wife'.

 

Thomas Thorp (1850–1914) was an English manufacturer of scientific instruments. In pursuit of his childhood interest in astronomy, he developed considerable skills in the

manufacture of optical glass and both reflector and refractor telescopes. He also created celluloid diffraction grating replicas, polarising solar eyepieces and prominence

spectroscopes that were widely used, as well as objective prisms. He began his working life as an apprentice to a firm of architects and ended it as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, having had a keen interest in astronomy since childhood.

 

Being 17 years Annie's senior, Walter died in 1928 at the age of 76 almost 20 years before she did, leaving her to continue her astronomical work alone. She continued to devote

herself to the work of the British Astronomical Association, maintaining the role of editor of its journal for the year following her husband's death. In her later years, she became interested in ancient astronomies, specifically the origin of the 48 ancient constellations, becoming an authoritative figure on the subject. Annie herself passed away on 15 September 1947 in Wandsworth, London, at the age of 79 following a short illness.

 

Legacy

(a) The lunar crater "Maunder" located in the region of Noachis Terra on Mars has been named after Annie & Walter Maunder.

(b) The "Maunder Minimum", the name used for the period of time around 1645 to 1715 during which sunspots became exceedingly rare.

(c) 2018 seen a blue plaque unveiled by the Ulster History Circle in Annie's home town of Stabane, at Patrick Street near "Oysters" restraunt, beside the old Strabane 2nd Presbyterian Church, County Tyrone,

where her father William served as minister.

(d) In 2016 the RAS established the Annie Maunder medal for an outstanding contribution to outreach and public engagement in astronomy or geophysics.

(e) In June 2018 it was announced that the Royal Observatory, Greenwich had installed a new telescope in its Altazimuth Pavilion, the Annie Maunder Astrographic Telescope (AMAT), as part of a revival of telescopy in London enabled by cleaner air and advanced technology.

(f) In March 2022 English Heritage unveiled a blue plaque to Annie and Walter Maunder at their former home at 69, Tyrwhitt Road, Brockley in Lewisham, London. The Maunders wrote "The Heavens and their Story" in 1908 while they were living there. They had previously lived at number 86.

(g) On 1 April 2022, a satellite named after Annie (ÑuSat 23 - Aleph-1 23) or "Annie", COSPAR 2022-033M) was launched into space as part of the Satellogic Aleph-1 constellation

using a Falcon 9 Block 5 which is a partially reusable two-stage-to-orbit medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX.

(h) Greenwich’s decision to designate 14 April (her birthday) as Annie Maunder Day means that her astronomical star will continue to shine brightly for many years.

 

Let's end with a quote from Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie.

Forbidden professionalism by her gender, Annie Maunder was compelled to be an obligatory amateur. But rather than resenting this niche, she took advantage of the situation to

become an advocate of the amateur. Possessing all the requisites for professionalism except the correct gender, she was not just an adjunct to Walter but an important contributor to astronomy in her own right.... Annie Maunder's basic mathematical training, thoughtful publications, editing of journals and membership of professional organisations make it clear that she was a full participant in the astronomical community.

Done