Susan Faye Cannon, born Walter Faw Cannon (October 15, 1925, in Durham, North Carolina – November 6, 1981), was an American historian of science, physicist, and Smithsonian curator.
Career
In 1947, Cannon gained a bachelor's degree in physics at Princeton University.[1] Turning to the history of science, she earned her PhD from Harvard University in 1956, with a dissertation "On uniformity and progression in early Victorian cosmography."
From 1962 to 1979, Cannon was a historian of science and a Curator of the Classical Physics and Geosciences collection at the Smithsonian Institution.[2] She founded and was the first editor of the Smithsonian Journal of History.[3]
In 1976, Cannon changed her name to Susan Faye Cannon, thereafter referring to herself as a "male woman".[1] Now, Cannon would be called a transgender woman.
Cannon was found dead of a codeine overdose November 6, 1981.[3][1]
Works
"The Problem of Miracles in the 1830s", Victorian Studies 4 (1960), 5–32. JSTOR3825795
"The Impact of Uniformitarianism: Two Letters from John Herschel to Charles Lyell, 1836–37," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 105 (1961) 310–14. JSTOR985457
"The Uniformitarian-Catastrophist Debate," Isis 51 (1960) 38–55. doi:10.1086/348838
"John Herschel and the Idea of Science," Journal of the History of Ideas, 22 (1961), 215–39 doi:10.2307/2707834
"Scientists and Broad Churchmen: An Early Victorian Intellectual Network", Journal of British Studies 4 (1964): 65–88. doi:10.1086/385492PMID19588590
Science and Culture: The Early Victorian Period, 1978. Winner, Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society.[3]