Mary Anna Draper

[3] She helped found the Mount Wilson Observatory and created an award for astronomical research, the Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences.

[3][4] 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.

[4] After the death of her husband in 1882, she donated her equipment to the Harvard College Observatory, and endowed the Henry Draper Memorial to fund the continuation of her research.

[4] These included her niece Antonia Maury, who proposed new ways to classify stellar spectra,[7] and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, whose work on Cepheid variable stars led to their use as important galactic distance indicators.

[6][9] She hosted scientific lectures and exhibitions at her home laboratory, and continued until her death of pneumonia in 1914[3] in New York City.