Background
Anne Sewell Young was born in Bloomington, Wisconsin on January 2, 1871 to Reverend Albert Adams Young and Mary (née Sewell).
Astronomer university professor
Anne Sewell Young was born in Bloomington, Wisconsin on January 2, 1871 to Reverend Albert Adams Young and Mary (née Sewell).
She then went to Walla Walla, Washington and taught mathematics at Whitman College for three years before returning to Carleton, earning her Master of Surgery in 1897. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia University in 1906.
She was an astronomy professor at Mount Holyoke College for 37 years. She earned a Bachelor of Laws from Minnesota"s Carleton College in 1892. Her dissertation assessed measurements of early photographs and determined that the constellation Perseus had twice as many stars as previously thought.
Young started her career at Mount Holyoke College in 1899.
She was appointed director of the John Payson Williston Observatory where she supervised an observational program tracking sunspots. She organized events at the observatory for Mount Holyoke students and in 1925 arranged for the student body to take the train to central Connecticut to observe the total solar eclipse.
Young had a pronounced interest in variable stars and corresponded on the subject with Edward Charles Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory. She was elected the organization"s President in 1923.
Young died there on August 15, 1961.
She was one of the eight founding members of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and contributed over 6,500 variable star observations to the organization.