🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Science · Maths, astronomy, medicine & more

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

1943– · British (Northern Irish)

Astronomy — radio astronomy and pulsars

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, born in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967 while a PhD student at Cambridge, spotting a strange regularly repeating signal on the chart recordings of a radio telescope she had helped build. The 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics went to her supervisor Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle, and her exclusion became a celebrated controversy. She later led major scientific societies, won the 2018 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, and gave the money to fund physics PhD scholarships for under-represented students.

How to spot them

  • ▸Discovered the first pulsar in 1967 as a Cambridge research student; the signal nicknamed 'LGM-1' (Little Green Men)
  • ▸Left out of the 1974 Nobel Prize awarded to Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle
  • ▸Donated her 2018 Special Breakthrough Prize to fund PhD scholarships through the Institute of Physics
  • ▸First woman president of the Institute of Physics and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
  • ▸Dame (2007); Companion of Honour (2025); Copley Medal

Key discoveries & works

Discovery of the first pulsar (1967)

A radio source (CP 1919, now PSR B1919+21) pulsing every 1.337 seconds, later explained as a rotating neutron star

Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source (1968)

The Nature paper announcing pulsars, by Hewish, Bell and colleagues

Donation of a $3 million Breakthrough Prize to fund physics PhD scholarships (2018)

Supports students from under-represented groups; administered by the Institute of Physics

Dark Matter: Poems of Space (2008)

Anthology of astronomy-inspired poetry co-edited with the poet Maurice Riordan

Key ideas

  • Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars sweeping beams of radio waves past the Earth like a lighthouse
  • Her Nobel omission became a touchstone in debates on credit for students and women in science; she has said a Nobel for a student would have debased the prize
  • Long-standing advocate of diversity in physics; helped found the Athena SWAN charter for gender equality in higher education

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born 15 July 1943 in Lurgan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland
  • •Studied physics at the University of Glasgow before her PhD at Cambridge
  • •Spent two years helping build the radio telescope (an array covering about four and a half acres) on which she made the discovery
  • •The first pulsar was first noticed as a bit of 'scruff' on the chart recorder
  • •A plot of pulses from PSR B1919+21 was used on the cover of Joy Division's album Unknown Pleasures (1979)
  • •President of the Royal Astronomical Society 2002–2004; first woman president of the Institute of Physics (2008–2010) and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2014–2018)
  • •Appointed DBE in 2007 and Companion of Honour in the 2025 King's Birthday Honours; FRS 2003; Royal Medal 2015; Copley Medal 2021, only the second woman after Dorothy Hodgkin
  • •A Quaker; visiting professor of astrophysics at Oxford and former Chancellor of the University of Dundee

Drill it — 7 cards

1 / 7new card

Sources