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A harvest mouse clings to a crab apple half-eaten by a hornet, near Wimborne, Dorset, England.

Photo by Dean Mason

Pulsar Discoverer Jocelyn Bell Burnell Wins $3 Million Breakthrough Prize, and Donates It to Fund Women and Minorities in Physics

In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars while working as a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. Pulsars are fast-spinning stellar cores left by supernovae, which periodically beam electromagnetic radiation; you can imagine them as cosmic lighthouses (band name, anyone?).

Image: Daily Herald Archive/SSPL/Getty Images

She observed those pulses with a radio telescope, that was initially designed by her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish for monitoring interplanetary scintillation. The discovery won a Nobel Prize in 1974, but for Hewish and radio astronomer Martin Ryle… while Bell was excluded.

Nevertheless, Dame Jocelyn has a 50-year career behind her, and has contributed to teaching and leadership. Now, her work is recognized with the $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.  

“Until that moment, no one had any real idea how neutron stars could be observed, if indeed they existed. Suddenly it turned out that nature has provided an incredibly precise way to observe these objects, something that has led to many later advances,” said Edward Witten, the chair of the Breakthrough Prize selection committee,  about the discovery in a statement.  

“The plan is, broadly, to use the money to fund research students — graduate students, particularly students from underrepresented groups in physics,“ the professor herself told Space.com.

⭐More articles about Jocelyn Bell Burnell: 1, 2, 3.  

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