Jocelyn Bell Burnell, discoverer of pulsars and champion of women in science University of DundeeJocelyn Bell Burnell is a legend in astronomy. As a graduate student at University of Cambridge more than 50 years ago, she was
the first person to discover pulsars, fast-rotating neutron stars that sweep a beam of light across the sky like a lighthouse. That work has now been recognised with the $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. This is the fourth such prize that has been awarded in the seven years since it was established – the first three went to Stephen Hawking, CERN scientists who led the search for the Higgs boson, and the LIGO collaboration for discovering gravitational waves.Bell Burnell went on to serve as president of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, leadership positions that were also recognised by the Breakthrough Prize.
How did you discover pulsars?
When I came to Cambridge, I found myself suffering from what I now know is impostor syndrome – I thought, “they’re all very bright here, I don’t belong here, they’re going to throw me out.” But I was a bit of a survivor and I decided that until they threw me out I was going to work my very hardest. So I was being extremely thorough, and I spotted this anomalous signal. It typically occupied 5 millimetres in every 500 metres of this chart paper I was looking at, and it always came from the same part of the sky.
I tracked this spot of sky for several months with the telescope, picking up pulses. We established that the object had to be small because the pulses were short and sharp, but it had to be big because the pulses were always at the same rate – they weren’t getting tired and slowing up. We eventually found that they were small in width and big in mass, but it took some time to get your head around that for the first time.
What big questions about the universe can we answer with pulsars?
There are a pair of pulsars orbiting each other in a close binary system that’s proving very important for checking Einstein’s theory of gravity. People are a bit worried that we don’t understand gravity, but so far the pulsars are showing us that Einstein was right, and they’re eliminating some of the other theories that have been dreamt up.
Pulsars are also letting us test the principle of equivalence. You might recall that the astronauts on the moon made a great show of dropping a hammer and a feather to see if they fall in the same time. And they did. But the moon has very weak gravity, and around these pulsars the gravity is very strong, and it seems to hold up as they fall towards each other as well.
Why did you leave astronomy research?
I got engaged to be married between discovering pulsars two and three, and I wore my engagement ring into the lab, which was a mistake. At that time in Britain, married women didn’t work. I really had quite a tough time, and I moved away from radio astronomy.
The phase following my PhD was extremely miscellaneous. I was married to a man who had to move jobs regularly, so we were moving up and down the country. I had the opportunity to try many different roles outside of a research career.
Where did your career go next?
I had acquired a whole raft of skills, which is why I’ve been asked to be president of these various bodies, like the Institute of Physics. I was also part of a group of women who established the Athena SWAN initiative. It started quite a long time ago with a small group of senior women meeting after work, wondering what we could do to improve the position of women in science. We decided to create a prize for the universities that are best for women, so they’d compete for it. And they did!
Do you have any plans for the $3 million prize money?
I’ve been talking with the Institute of Physics, who I’m glad to say are very happy to go along with this idea that I have. And that’s that the money goes to graduate studentships in physics for people who are from underrepresented groups.
I’ve come up with this because my feeling is that a lot of the thrust behind my discovery of pulsars was because I was an outsider. If we can support more people from underrepresented groups we can have more of these interesting ideas.
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