Annie Maunder

Ezzy Pearson celebrates the achievements of the early 20th century's great solar scientist

- By Ezzy Pearson. Fotos por National Portrait Gallery, Royal Astronomical society, Tom Bogdan, National Science Foundation X2, English Heritage

This March, English Heritage commemorated the lives of two great solar scientists, Annie Maunder and her husband Walter, by placing a blue plaque on their former home on Tyrwhitt Road in Lewisham, south London. The pair spent decades observing and studying the Sun, even giving their name to a period of low solar activity at the end of the 17th century now known as the Maunder Minimum.

English Heritage's blue plaque scheme, which began in 1866, honours notable people with distinctive circular signs on the buildings they lived and worked in. Twelve new plaques are erected annually, each one considered by a panel of historians, artists, scientists and writers.

Howard Spencer, English Heritage's Senior Historian, explains why the Maunders have been selected. “As well as their important work on sunspots, solar photography and the debunking of the canals-on-Mars myth, the Maunders were also active in promoting amateur astronomy, he says.

Annie Maunder was born Annie Russell in County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1868. She excelled at school and earned a place at Girton College, Cambridge. Despite being her college's top mathematician, restrictions of the day meant she was unable to receive a degree: her achievements occurred during a time when being a woman meant she was barred from academic recognition, and much of professional astronomy.

In 1891, she took a position at the Royal Observatory Greenwich as a 'lady computer', mathematically calculating the positions and brightnesses of stars by hand. In the late 19th century, this tedious, low-paid role was performed by university-educated women who were denied the higher status jobs of their male counterparts.