Jocelyn Bell Burnell

She is renowned for discovering the first radio pulsars in 1967 while she was a graduate student at Cambridge University. Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit regular pulses of radio waves, confirming a major theoretical prediction in astrophysics. Her meticulous observations were made using a massive radio telescope she helped construct.

She notably did not share in the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was awarded to her thesis supervisor, Antony Hewish, and his colleague Martin Ryle. The omission caused widespread controversy in the scientific community regarding the systemic lack of recognition for graduate students. Bell Burnell has stated she holds no bitterness about the decision.

She was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, which came with a $3 million monetary reward. Instead of keeping the prize money, she donated the entirety of it to create a fund for underrepresented groups in physics research. This act cemented her legacy as an advocate for diversity in STEM.

She conducted her research using the Interplanetary Scintillation Array, a massive radio telescope constructed at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. The telescope was located near Cambridge, England, and was built under the guidance of Antony Hewish. It was designed to track the rapid fluctuations of radio sources, which led to the pulsar discovery.