Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a British astrophysicist, who discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, when she was a research assistant.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born in 1943, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1965 from the University of Glasgow. Burnell went on to study radio astronomy at Cambridge University where she worked as a research assistant to astronomers Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle.
The team was involved in the construction of a massive radio telescope to monitor quasars. By 1967, it was operational and Bell Burnell was tasked with analysing the data it produced.
Alien communication
It is from this data that she discovered a series of regular radio pulses and brought them to Hewish’s attention. The team then spent the next few months trying to decode what it was. They jokingly dubbed the pulses – Little Green Men -recognising the possibility that they could be communication attempts by extraterrestrial intelligence. After monitoring the pulses using more sensitive equipment, the team discovered the pulsars. She and Hewish published the paper in 1968. In 1974, the discovery was chosen for the Nobel Prize for Physics, but it was awarded only to Hewish and Ryle. Many in the scientific community raised their objections, believing that Bell Burnell’s contribution had been unfairly neglected. However, Bell Burnell humbly rejected the notion, feeling that the prize had been properly awarded given her status as a graduate student. She received her doctorate in 1969.
Other works
She taught and studied gamma ray astronomy, x-ray astronomy and infrared astronomy. She then became a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, where she continued her studies in neutron stars.
Awards and honours
Though she did not receive the Nobel, Bell Burnell’s contributions to science were recognised. She received many awards and honours later in her life. As recent as 2018, she was awarded a $3-million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Bell Burnell has spent her career working for the upliftment of women and minorities in science. Bell Burnell also has honorary degrees from an array of universities.
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