Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell: discoverer of pulsars
September 9, 2022
As a graduate student at Cambridge in 1967, Jocelyn Bell famously discovered pulsars – the super-compact relics of supernova explosions that pack the mass of the Sun into the volume of Mount Everest. She was also famously overlooked for the Nobel Prize, three of which have now gone for pulsars and none to her. She is also the only person I have ever interviewed whose discovery appears on a bank note – the Bank of Ulster Northern Ireland £50 note! I a big admirer of Jocelyn’s not only for her science but for her determination in the face of adversity and her tremendous generosity in doing everything she can to help disadvantaged minorities – women, ethnic minorities, refugees, and so on – do what she did: research in physics… here
Or to read my profile of Jocelyn… Click here