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Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Summary
Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (bɜrˈnɛl; Bell; born 15 July 1943) is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. The discovery eventually earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974; however, she was not one of the prize's recipients.
Since 2018, she has served as Chancellor of the University of Dundee.
Bell Burnell was president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002 to 2004, president of the Institute of Physics from October 2008 until October 2010, and interim president of the Institute following the death of her successor, Marshall Stoneham, in early 2011.
In 2018, she was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Following the announcement of the award, she decided to use the $3 million (£2.3 million) prize money to establish a fund to help female, minority and refugee students to become research physicists. The fund is administered by the Institute of Physics.
In 2021, Bell Burnell became the second female recipient (after Dorothy Hodgkin in 1976) of the Copley Medal.
Bell Burnell was born in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, to M. Allison and G. Philip Bell. Their country home was called "Solitude" and she grew up there with her younger brother and two younger sisters. Her father was an architect who helped design the Armagh Planetarium, and during her visits there, the staff encouraged her to pursue a career in astronomy. She also enjoyed her father's books on astronomy.
She grew up in Lurgan and attended the Preparatory Department of Lurgan College from 1948 to 1956. At the time, boys could study technical subjects, but girls were expected to study subjects such as cooking and cross-stitching. Bell Burnell was able to study science only after her parents and others challenged the school's policies.
She failed the eleven-plus exam and her parents sent her to The Mount School, a Quaker girls' boarding school in York, England, where she completed her secondary education in 1961. There she was favourably impressed by her physics teacher, Mr.
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