[Guwardian] It was not a surprise to read that Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell has said she will donate the money she has just won as recipient of the £2.3m Breakthrough prize to help students underrepresented in physics to study the subject she loves.
As a research student in the 1960s, Bell Burnell noticed a mysterious pulsing signal in data from a radio telescope. In time, and after much painstaking observation on her part, this was revealed to be a new type of star: a pulsar. She was the first scientist ever to have detected one ‐ but in the end the Nobel prize recognising the discovery went to her male PhD supervisor.
Bell Burnell is one of those rare scientists who go out of their way to help an inquiring mind. As a science journalist, I found her always prepared to answer a question or two on the latest discovery in astrophysics, or on the seemingly endless struggle to encourage more girls and women to enter the field and stay. In this latest move, she gives others the opportunity to make their mark in the way that she did. And as she puts it: "Increasing the diversity of physics could lead to all sorts of good things". |