Jocelyn Bell Burnell President of the Royal Astronomical Society 2002 to 2004 President of the Institute of Physics 2008 to 2010 Elected Pro-Chancellor of the University of Dublin 2013 Elected President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 2014 B.S University of Glasgow (1965) Ph.D., Radio Astronomy, University of Cambridge (1968)

Biography

Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born in 1943 in Northern Ireland to Allison and Phillip Bell. She discovered her passion for astronomy early in life through books. At Lurgan College, she began her higher education but was restricted from studying science due to her gender. At the time, women were not allowed to study science at the school. Her parents were committed to the education of their daughter so when Jocelyn was unable to pass the entrance examine for continuing education her parents sent her to a Quaker boarding school. At the age of 22, she graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in Physics and then went on to earn her doctorate at the University of Cambridge. Presently she is working as a visiting Professor or Astrophysics at the University of Oxford.

Research

Jocelyn Bell Brunell’s groundbreaking research began during her time at Cambridge. She was involved in the development of a radio telescope to track quasars and after its completion became the telescope operator in charge of analyzing data collected. It was during this time that she discovered an anomaly in the data, which led her to the discovery of pulsars. This discovery lead to the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to the lead researcher Antony Hewish along with Marti Ryle. She was excluded from the award despite the fact that she first discovered the pulsar and was named second behind Hewish in the paper announcing the discovery.

Awards, Honors, and Special Recognitions

 The Albert A. Michelson Medal of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia (1973)  J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize from the Center for Theoretical Studies, (1978)  Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize of the American Astronomical Society (1986)  Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (19989)  Jansky Lectureship before the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (1995)  Magellanic Premium of the American Philosophical Society (2000)  Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) 2003  Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) 2004  The Grote Ruber Medal (2011)  The Royal Medal of the Royal Society (2015)  Women of the year Prudential Lifetime Achievement Aware (2015)