Jocelyn Bell Burnell on pulsars and sexism in physics
Jocelyn Bell Burnell talks pulsars and missing out on a Nobel Prize with Jim Al-Khalili.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell forged a path through the male-dominated world of physics. As the only woman studying physics at Glasgow University in the 1960s, she was greeted by wolf whistles and stampeding feet every time she entered the lecture hall. Working as a PhD student in Cambridge, she spotted a tiny anomaly in the print out from a radio telescope and went on to discover a new kind of star. The 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics, awarded for the discovery of pulsars, is often called the No-Bell Nobel Prize because so many people feel so strongly that Jocelyn should have shared in the prize. Jocelyn, however, is stoical. 鈥楾he world is unfair it鈥檚 how you deal with that unfairness that counts鈥�, she says. 50 years after this discovery Jocelyn was awarded the 2018 Breakthrough Prize for fundamental physics and has donated all 拢2.3 million prize money to improving diversity in science.
Jim鈥檚 interview with Jocelyn was recorded in September 2011.
Producer: Anna Buckley
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The Life Scientific
Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.
