Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Dame

Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Dame; Jocelyn Bell Burnell;
	Bell Burnell in 2009
Born	Susan Jocelyn Bell; 15 July 1943 (aged 83) ; Lurgan, Northern Ireland
Education	The Mount School, York
Alma mater	University of Glasgow (BSc); University of Cambridge (PhD);
Known for	Discovering the first four pulsars
Children	Gavin Burnell
Awards	J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize (1978); Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize (1986); Herschel Medal (1989); Michael Faraday Prize (2010); Royal Medal (2015); Grande Médaille (2018); Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2018);
	Scientific career
Fields	Astrophysics
Institutions	University of Bath; University of Cambridge; University of Glasgow; Open University; University of Oxford; University of Southampton; University College London;
Thesis	The Measurement of radio source diameters using a diffraction method (1968)
Influences	Fred Hoyle Frontiers of Astronomy (1955); Henry Tillott (her school physics teacher);
	Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell's voice
	from the BBC programme The Life Scientific, 25 October 2011.
	Problems listening to this file? See media help.
Website	www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/contacts/people/bellburnell

Composite Optical/X-ray image of the Crab Nebula, showing synchrotron emission in the surrounding pulsar wind nebula. This is powered by the injection of magnetic fields and particles from the central pulsar

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (/bɜːrˈnɛl/; born 15 July 1943) is a Northern Irish astrophysicist. Her discovery of radio pulsars has been called as "one of the most significant scientific achievements of the 20th Century".^[9]

Her work was recognised by the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics to her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish^[5]^[6] and to the astronomer Martin Ryle. Bell was excluded, despite having been the first to observe and precisely analyse the pulsars.^[10]

Burnell won the 2018 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Awards

The Albert A. Michelson Medal of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia (1973, jointly with Dr. Hewish).^[11]^[12]
J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize from the Center for Theoretical Studies, University of Miami (1978).^[13]^[14]
Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize of the American Astronomical Society (1986).^[15]
Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1989).^[16]
Jansky Lectureship before the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (1995).^[17]
Magellanic Premium of the American Philosophical Society (2000).^[18]
Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) (March 2003).^[19]
Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) (2004).^[1]
William E. Gordon and Elva Gordon distinguished lecture at the Arecibo Observatory on 27 June 2006.^[20]
The Grote Reber Medal at the General Assembly of the International Radio Science Union in Istanbul (19 August 2011)^[21]
The Royal Medal of the Royal Society (2015).^[22]
The Women of the Year Prudential Lifetime Achievement Award (2015)^[23]
The Institute of Physics President's Medal (2017)^[24]
Grande Médaille of the French Academy of Sciences (2018)^[25]
Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2018)^[26]

Honours

In 1999, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Astronomy and promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2007.^[27]
In February 2013, she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.^[28]
In February 2014, she was elected President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the first woman to hold that office. She held the position from April 2014 to April 2018 when she was succeeded by Dame Anne Glover.^[9]
In 2016, the Institute of Physics renamed their award for early-career female physicists the Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal and Prize.^[29]

Publications

Her publications include:

Burnell, S. Jocelyn. Broken for Life. Swarthmore Lecture (1989). London: Quaker Home Service. ISBN 978-0-85245-222-6.
Riordan, Maurice. Dark Matter: Poems of Space (27 October 2008)Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. ISBN 978-1-903080-10-8.