Jocelyn Bell

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Born: 15 July 1943, Lurgan, Armagh, Northern Ireland

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell, DBE, FRS, FRSE, FInsP, is an astrophysicist who discovered pulsars, spinning neutron stars, as a postgrad in 1967. When she first saw the strange pulsing radio signal on her chart recorder output, she marked it as LGM for Little Green Men. This discovery resulted in the award of the Nobel Prize to Antony Hewish, her supervisor, and Martin Ryle, a Cambridge astrophysicist. Bell Burnell was not included in the award although she was second author on the paper that announced the result to the world, and the person who performed all the experimental work. When in later life she was awarded a £2.3 million prize for her work, she donated the money to a program to help under-represented groups become research physicists.

Susan Jocylyn Bell was born into a family of four children, 3 girls and a boy. Her father was an architect and had an extensive library where she read of the world of astronomy. Her parents encouraged this interest. They were strong advocates for the education of women, so when she failed her 11-plus exams that allowed students in the UK to attend an academic rather than vocational high school, her parents enrolled her in a private boarding school. Here she could take courses in languages and sciences.

She attended Glasgow University in Scotland, graduating with a BS in physics in 1965. After graduation, she moved to Cambridge University to study for a Ph.D. It was here, while still a postgrad, that she discovered pulsars while working under the supervision of Antony Hewish. On 28 November 1967, Bell Burnell detected a “bit of scruff” on her chart-recorder papers that tracked across the sky with the stars. The signal had been visible in data taken in August, but as the papers had to be checked by hand, it took her three months to find it. She established that the signal was pulsing with great regularity, at a rate of about one pulse every one and a third seconds. Temporarily dubbed “Little Green Man 1” (LGM-1) the source (now known as PSR B1919+21) was identified after several years as a rapidly rotating neutron star.

In a 2020 lecture at Harvard, she related how the media was covering the discovery of pulsars, with interviews taking a standard “disgusting” format: Hewish would be asked on the astrophysics, and she would be the “human interest” part, asked about vital statistics, how many boyfriends she had, what color is her hair, and asked to undo some buttons for the photographs. It was the Daily Telegraph science reporter who came up with the term pulsar by shortening “pulsating radio source”.

Later, when Hewish and Ryle were awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery, several prominent scientists in the UK objected to the exclusion of Bell.

After receiving her Ph.D. she worked at the University of Southampton between 1968 and 1973, University College London from 1974 to 82 and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh (1982–91). From 1973 to 1987 she was a tutor, consultant, examiner, and lecturer for the Open University. In 1986, she became the project manager for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a position she held until 1991. She was Professor of Physics at the Open University from 1991 to 2001. She was also a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States and Dean of Science at the University of Bath (2001–04), and President of the Royal Astronomical Society between 2002 and 2004.

Bell Burnell was visiting professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Mansfield College in 2007. She was President of the Institute of Physics between 2008 and 2010. In February 2018 she was appointed Chancellor of the University of Dundee, in Scotland.

As can be seen from the awards she received during her life, including being made a Dame of the British Empire (DBE), and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), she was well recognized during her career, albeit not by the Nobel Committee.

She married Martin Burnell in 1968. The two have a son, Gavin, also a physicist, and were divorced in 1993.