Burnell, S. Jocelyn, 1943-

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS FRSE FRAS FInstP (/bɜːrˈnɛl/; née Bell; born 15 July 1943) is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967.[9][10] The discovery eventually earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974; however, she was not one of the prize's recipients.[11]

Bell Burnell was president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002 to 2004, president of the Institute of Physics from October 2008 until October 2010, and interim president of the Institute following the death of her successor, Marshall Stoneham, in early 2011. She was Chancellor of the University of Dundee from 2018 to 2023.

In 2018, she was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Following the announcement of the award, she decided to use the $3 million (£2.3 million) prize money to establish a fund to help female, minority and refugee students to become research physicists. The fund is administered by the Institute of Physics.[12][13][14][15]

In 2021, Bell Burnell became the second female recipient (after Dorothy Hodgkin in 1976) of the Copley Medal.[16] Bell Burnell was born in Lurgan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, to M. Allison and G. Philip Bell.[5][6][4] She grew up in Lurgan and attended the Preparatory Department[a] of Lurgan College from 1948 to 1956.[5] At the time, boys could study technical subjects, but girls were expected to study subjects such as cooking and cross-stitching. Bell Burnell was able to study science only after her parents and others challenged the school's policies.[21][22] She next joined the University of Glasgow, where in 1965 she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Philosophy (physics), with honours, and then New Hall, Cambridge, where she gained a PhD in 1969.[4] On 28 November 1967, while a postgraduate student at Cambridge, Bell Burnell detected a "bit of scruff" on her chart-recorder papers that tracked across the sky with the stars. She worked at the University of Southampton between 1968 and 1973, University College London from 1974 to 82 and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh (1982–91). From 1973 to 1987 she was a tutor, consultant, examiner, and lecturer for the Open University.[28] In 1986, she became the project manager for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a position she held until 1991.[29][30] She was Professor of Physics at the Open University from 1991 to 2001. She was also a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States and Dean of Science at the University of Bath (2001–04),[31] and President of the Royal Astronomical Society between 2002 and 2004.

Bell Burnell was visiting professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Mansfield College in 2007.[32] She was President of the Institute of Physics between 2008 and 2010.[33] In February 2018 she was appointed Chancellor of the University of Dundee.[34] In 2018, Bell Burnell visited Parkes, NSW, to deliver the keynote John Bolton lecture at the Central West Astronomical Society (CWAS) AstroFest event.[35][36]

In 2018, she was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, worth three million dollars (£2.3 million), for her discovery of radio pulsars.[37] The Special Prize, in contrast to the regular annual prize, is not restricted to recent discoveries.[38] She donated all of the money "to fund women, under-represented ethnic minority and refugee students to become physics researchers",[39] the funds to be administered by the Institute of Physics.[13] Controversially, Bell did not receive recognition in the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics. She helped build the Interplanetary Scintillation Array over two years[8] and initially noticed the anomaly, sometimes reviewing as much as 96 feet (29 m) of paper data per night. Bell later said that she had to be persistent in reporting the anomaly in the face of scepticism from Hewish, who initially insisted it was due to interference and man-made. She spoke of meetings held by Hewish and Ryle to which she was not invited.[41][22]