Anne Walker (astronomer)

Anne Walker (21 October 1863 – 2 March 1940) was a British astronomer and one of the first women employed in paid routine work in astronomy in her country.

[2] She was employed by the observatory in 1882 at the age of 19, and remained there for 21 years, working under astronomers John Couch Adams and Robert Stawell Ball.

[2] That Walker was making transit observations with the meridian circle in the mid-1880s is clear from an observatory report that stated her work was interrupted by an earth tremor on 22 April 1884, when she had to stop while wires in the eyepiece vibrated.

Anne Walker resigned at the same time as him, bringing her astronomical career at the Cambridge Observatory to an end after 21 years.

If true, this makes her the second woman (after Caroline Herschel) to have been recorded formally engaging in night-time astronomical observations.

Photograph of Cambridge Observatory Transit Circle, presumably in Thomas Cooke and Son workshop, York, 1870. This is the instrument used by Walker for her documented observations.
Photograph of the Cambridge Observatory Transit Circle, taken in April 1896. The astronomer is almost certainly Andrew Graham, Senior Assistant, with whom Walker worked most directly during her career