Burnell - blog - Sister to Sister

January 30, 2019, Joycelyn Bell Burnell, physicist

Joycelyn thought she was admitted by mistake, not believing she was smart enough to be at Cambridge. She was one of two women attending at the time and worked as hard as she could because she felt she did not belong.

After two years, she discovered a squiggle on the radio telescope.  She informed her PhD supervisor, Antony Hewish, of the discovery.  Now that she knew what to look for, she discovered others. In 1974, her supervisor won a Nobel Prize for the discovery of pulsar stars, but Joycelyn was not mentioned.   

In 2018, she was awarded three million dollars and the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.  She donated the money to fund women, under-represented ethnic minorities and refugee students to become physics researchers.

Although she did not get a Nobel Prize, she has received dozens of awards and honors and is currently teaching astronomy at Oxford University.