Florence May Campbell Bibber (January 10, 1908 - April 7, 1997) was a research assistant with Annie Jump Cannon of the Harvard College Observatory, and directoral assistant to Margaret Walton Mayall during her time with the AAVSO.

While at the Harvard Observatory, Bibber assisted Annie Jump Cannon, cataloging and taking measurements of variable stars.¹ Cannon’s cataloging process was rather distinctive: she would mark spectra on plates with numbers, and then, using a loupe magnifying glass, went star by star and called out their corresponding letter classification to her assistants. The numbers and classifications were recorded in logbooks. In using this process, Cannon’s assistants were invaluable to the process of stellar classification and her work building catalogs of spectra. Bibber and Margaret Walton Mayall continued taking measurements through 1941, after Cannon passed.²

In 1957, Bibber began work as an assistant to her good friend and the newest director of the AAVSO, Margaret Walton Mayall. Mayall had taken over when Bibber’s father retired from the position in 1949.³ Around 1960, Bibber switched from part-time to full-time when fellow-assistant Helen Shapinsky resigned. The two assistants had helped Mayall in keeping up with monthly reports, publishing observations, and fulfilling requests from astronomers while the AAVSO was on shaky legs following its move out of the HCO in 1949.⁴ Bibber retired from this position in 1971.

Florence May Campbell Bibber was born January 10th, 1908, in Cambridge Massachusetts to Leon Campbell and Frederica Jane Thompson Campbell.⁵ She was the second of what would be five children.⁶ In 1935, Florence married Milton Edward Bibber. From her earliest years, Bibber was involved in the world of HCO and astronomy. In 1911, Leon Campbell, Bibber’s father and well-known astronomer, was sent by Charles Pickering from HCO in Cambridge to be the new station supervisor of Boyden Station in Arequipa, Peru. He brought along his wife and three young children (including Florence, age 4). They lived there for four years before returning to Cambridge in 1915. Moving into a house closer to HCO, they reconnected with friends, family, and community, and Leon resumed working at HCO.⁷ When he became the director of the AAVSO (the title then called ‘Recorder’), he had countless friends and invaluable members of both organizations over their house, or was hosted by them in other places.⁸ In the 1970s, Bibber’s eldest daughter Priscilla went on to work with the AAVSO, making it three generations of the Campbell-Bibber family to work with the organization.⁹ Florence Campbell Bibber passed away on April 7th, 1997 at age 89.

Logbooks from Bibber’s time as an assistant at HCO can be found through the Astrophysics Data System or HOLLIS. Records from Bibber’s time at the AAVSO can be found through Harvard University Archives.

Written by Samantha Notick, 2022

Selected Publication:

Bibber, F. C.. “Personal Reminiscences.” The Journal of the American Association of Variable Star Observers vol. 15, no. 2 (1986)

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