50 years after discovery, physicist bestowed honor
When Jocelyn Bell Burnell began her doctoral studies in physics at Cambridge University in 1965, she was convinced that they had made a mistake by admitting her. “I’m not bright enough for this place,” she now recalls thinking at the time.
It didn’t help that she was one of only two women in her graduate program. And Cambridge was far more affluent than anywhere she had lived before. Both factors likely contributed to her impostor syndrome, she told The Washington Post, “although of course we didn’t know that term then.”
Bell Burnell’s response was to work as hard as she possibly could. If they threw her out anyway, she figured, she would know that she wasn’t smart enough to be at Cambridge.
Her diligence ended up paying off. Two years after she arrived at Cambridge, Bell Burnell discovered the first pulsars — a groundbreaking revelation that on Thursday earned her the $3 million special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, which was previously awarded to Stephen Hawking, among others.
It’s a recognition that many feel is long overdue. Bell Bur- nell’s male PhD supervisor won a Nobel Prize for the same discovery — in 1974.
Like the stars of “Hidden Figures” and DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin, Bell Bur- nell’s personal story embod- ies the challenges faced by women in scientific fields. Born in Northern Ireland in 1943, she had to fight to take science classes after the age of 12. “The assumption was that the boys would do science and the girls would do cook- ery and needlework,” she told The Washington Post. “It was such a firm tions,” she told The Guardassumption ian in 2009. “We estimated that it wasn’t it was 200 light years away, even disfar beyond the sun and plancussed, so ets, but still within our galaxy, there was the Milky Way.” no choice As a joke, they labeled it in the matLGM-1, which stood for “Litter.” tle Green Men.” When Bell
By her Burnell returned to the obserjunior year vatory at 3 a.m. on a freezing at the Unicold December night, she had versity of Glasgow, she was what she called a “Eureka!” the only woman enrolled in moment. honors physics. Men whistled “Wading through miles of and heckled her every time chart, I discovered two more she walked into the lecture of the mysterious signals,” she hall, she said. told The Guardian. “I had, it
“I learned not to blush,” transpired, discovered the first she said. “If you blushed, they four examples of an unimagjust got louder.” ined kind of star — bizarre
At Cambridge, the sexism astral bodies that transmitwas somewhat more subted radio beams as they spun, tle, she said. When Bell Burwhich swept through space nell got engaged, the auto- like the ray of a lighthouse. matic assumption was that We called them pulsars.” she would be dropping out When Bell Burnell and of the program soon, since it her supervisor published a was still considered shameful paper detailing their findfor married women to work. ings in 1968, it attracted “I got a bit of the sense that international attention. The because I was quitting, it prob- media didn’t know what to ably wasn’t worth investing do with a young female sciin me anymore,” she said. entist who had made a major
Then, in 1967, Bell Burnell breakthrough, she told The alerted her PhD supervisor, Guardian.
Antony Hewish, to an “unclas“Photographers would say, sifiable squiggle” on the read- ‘Could you undo some buttons out from the radio telescope on your jacket, please?’” she that she was in charge of monirecalled. “Journalists asked toring. It was the kind of detail how many boyfriends I had.” that others might have disreThen, Hewish, her supergarded or overlooked. visor, was awarded the 1974
“The source didn’t seem to Nobel Prize in physics “for be man-made — it was moving his decisive role in the disaround with the stars, keep- covery of pulsars.” ing pace with the constella-