.jpg)
Jocelyn Bell Burnell is an astronomer from Northern Ireland. While she made a discovery and was excluded from the Nobel Prize in Physics for that discovery, she went on to win other awards as well as make a difference in the lives of students.
Burnell was born born on July 15, 1943, in Lurgan,Northern Ireland. She grew up with a Quaker background. Her father served as the architect for the Armagh Observatory near their home. He was also an avid reader, giving Burnell access to books and information about the field of astronomy. As a child, her teacher tried to remove the girls from science class. Thanks to her parents, she was able to stay.
She attended Cambridge University, and from there, she went
on to hold research posts and lectureships at Southampton, University College
London, the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, and the Open University. While at Open
University, she became the dean and helped students learn when distance prevented
them from attending in-person classes. She also had a professorship at Oxford.
Over the course of her work, Burnell became a leader in her
field. She held the position of the President of the Royal Astronomical Society
and the President of the Institute of Physics. She was also the first woman
President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.As a professor, she was remembered
by her students as making radio interferometry interesting with her clear, kind,
and funny personality.
In 1967, when Burnell was just 24 years old, she was a PhD
student. During this time, she helped build a four-acre forest of wire and wooden
poles. This was built by hand and had the purpose of studying distant twinkling
signals from distant quasars. She also read the chart-recorder paper each day
to see if anything odd appeared.
During her chart-recorder paper readings, she did come
across something unusual. She noticed a scruff that did not look like the
atmosphere or even a faulty wire. This showed up again and again, appearing as
one pulse every 1.3 seconds. Her first instinct was that it was aliens, “LGM-1”
(Little Green Men), but more sources with other periods pointed to nature performing
this abnormality.
It was discovered that this was caused by pulsars, which are
quickly-spinning neutron stars left over from supernovas. This discovery proved
the existence of ultra-dense, collapsed stars, changing astrophysics forever. It
was a way to test gravity under extreme circumstances.
Unfortunately, the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics went to
Burnell’s supervisor, Antony Hewish, and Martin Ryle, who was a pioneer in radio
astronomy. Burnell was left out of the prize, even though she is the one who
made the discovery.
She was gracious, but pointed out that the Nobel Prize tends
to favor leaders over students. However, she did win many prestigious honors
over the years, including the 2018 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental
Physics. She donated the $3 million prize to scholarships for those who are underrepresented
in the field of physics, including women, refugees, Black and brown students,
and anyone else who tends to have fewer chances in the field.
Related Articles:
-Celtic Women: Marguerite Blessington: https://kiltedowl.blogspot.com/2025/03/marguerite-blessington.html
-Celtic Women: Danu: https://kiltedowl.blogspot.com/2025/03/celtic-women-danu.html
-Celtic Women: Brigid: https://kiltedowl.blogspot.com/2025/02/celtic-women-brigid.html