Jocelyn Bell Burnell

For more information on Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell, visit Britannica.com.

[b. Belfast, Northern Ireland, July 15, 1943]

As a graduate student surveying quasars with a radio telescope at Cambridge University in England she had helped build, Bell recognized that a periodic radio signal had too short a period and was too regular to come from any then known astronomical phenomenon. After a brief period during which Bell and Anthony Hewish suspected extraterrestrial life as a source and Bell discovered a second similarly periodic signal, the sources were named pulsars. Bell then discovered two more pulsars, all of which would later be recognized as neutron stars. Her later work used satellites and radio telescopes to study stars and other astronomical bodies at almost all electromagnetic wavelengths.

The radio astronomer Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (born 1943) discovered the first pulsar (stars that release regular bursts of radio waves) in 1967.

Susan Jocelyn Bell (Burnell) was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on July 15, 1943. Her father was the architect for the Armagh Observatory, which was close to their home. Her early interest in astronomy was encouraged by the observatory staff.

She studied at the Mount School in York, England, from 1956 to 1961. She earned a B.S. in physics at the University of Glasgow in 1965. That same year, she began work on her Ph.D. at Cambridge University. There, under the supervision of Antony Hewish, she constructed and operated a 81.5 megaherz radio telescope. She studied interplanetary scintillation of compact radio sources.

Bell Burnell detected the first four pulsars. The term "pulsar" is an abbreviation of pulsating radio star or of rapidly pulsating radio sources. Pulsars represent rotating neutron stars that emit brilliant flashes of electromagnetic radiation at each revolution, like beacons from a lighthouse. The observation of pulsars requires the use of radio telescopes. In 15 years, about 350 pulsars were found. Their pulse periods range from 33 microseconds to 4 seconds. A "fast" pulsar was discovered in 1982. Its short pulse period equals 1.5 microseconds. According to Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., "it has become clear that hundreds of thousands of pulsars must exist in the Milky Way Galaxy - most of them too distant to be detected with existing radio telescopes.

Discovery of Pulsar

For two years, Bell Burnell constructed the radio telescope which she would begin to operate in July 1967. Each complete coverage of the sky with the radio telescope required four days. Bell Burnell then had to analyze about 400 feet of paper chart. She noted: "We analyzed (actually, we didn't, I analyzed) all this chart by hand." The signal of the pulsar occupied about half an inch of the 400 feet of chart.

For the first time in the history of radio astronomy, a large area of the sky had been repeatedly surveyed with an extremely sensitive radio telescope tuned to meter wavelengths. The subsequent discovery of the pulsar, in 1967, ranks as an important milestone in the history of astrophysics. It has been written that "In an earlier age the pulsar would no doubt have been called 'Bell's star'; today it is simply known as CP 1919." "CP" stands for "Cambridge pulsar." The pulsars appeared as an appendix to Bell Burnell's Ph.D. thesis.

In 1947 Sir Martin Ryle and Tony Hewish, from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, with Hewish honored for the discovery of pulsars. This was the first time the prize was given for work in observational astronomy. The Nobel Prize announcement triggered a public controversy. Sir Fred Hoyle, the eminent British astronomer, argued that Bell Burnell should have shared the Nobel Prize.

Radio Astronomy Work

Bell Burnell held a Science Research Council fellowship from 1968 to 1970 and a junior teaching fellowship from 1970 to 1973 at the University of Southampton. During that time she studied the mid-latitude electron density trough in the topside ionosphere using data from the Alouette satellite, the enhancements of interplanetary scintillation, and their relationship to co-rotating streams in the interplanetary medium and to Forbush decreases. She developed and calibrated a 1-10 million electron volts gamma-ray telescope.

She was employed as a researcher at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at the University College in London; as a graduate programmer from 1974 to 1976, then as an associate research follow from 1976 to 1982. She analyzed data from a rocket flight to study low energy x-ray emission from galactic features. With the x-ray spectrometer on the Ariel V satellite she observed galactic sources, including transient x-ray sources and binary star systems, globular clusters, active galaxies, and clusters of galaxies.

After 1982 Bell Burnell worked as a senior research fellow at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland. There she made infrared observations of galaxies with active nuclei coordinated with radio, optical, ultraviolet, and x-ray observations. She also observed infrared counterparts of galactic x-ray sources.

Bell Burnell was the editor of The Observatory from 1973 to 1976. Elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1969, she became a council member from 1978 to 1981. She was elected a member of the International Astronomical Union in 1979 and served on the Science and Engineering Research Council, Astronomy I Committee from 1978 to 1984.

Bell Burnell has received numerous awards for her professional contributions. In 1973 she received (jointly with Hewish), the Michelson Medal by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. In 1978 she was awarded the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize from the Center for Theoretical Studies in Miami. In 1978 she was also given the Rennie Taylor Award by the American Tentative Society in New York. She received the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize from the American Astronomical Society in 1987 and the Herschel Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in 1989.

Bell Burnell was married in 1968 and has one son. In 1997 she headed the Physics Department at Open University in the United Kingdom.

Further Reading

A short biography of Bell Burnell appeared in John Daintith et al., Chambers Biographical Encyclopaedia of Scientists (1983). The first article on the pulsar, "Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source, " was published by Antony Hewish, Bell Burnell, J. D. H. Pilkington, P. F. Scott, and R. A. Collins in Nature (February 24, 1968). On the discovery of pulsars, see the paper by Bell Burnell, "The Discovery of Pulsars, " in Serendipitous Discoveries in Radio Astronomy, edited by K. Kellermann and B. Sheets (1984). The chronology of the discovery is discussed by S. W. Woolgar in "Writing an Intellectual History of Scientific Development: The Use of Discovery Accounts" in Social Studies of Science (September 1976). The Nobel Prize controversy is detailed in Nicholas Wade, "Discovery of Pulsars: A Graduate Student's Story" (News and Comment) in Science (August 1, 1975). On pulsars, see Antony Hewish, "Pulsars" in Scientific American (October 1968); A. Hewish "Pulsars and High Density Physics" Science (June 13, 1975); Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., "Pulsar, " in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1982); Donald Backer and Shrinivas Kulkarni, "Pulsar, " in McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology (1984). Further Information on Bell Burnell can be found in David E. Fisher's The Origin and Evolution of Our Own Particular Universe's Cosmic Wormholes: The Search for Interstellar Shortcuts (1992). Information about Bell Burnell's academic career can be accessed on the Internet through the Open University Physics Department's Web site at (July 29, 1997).

Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (on the right)
Born	15 July 1943 (1943-07-15) (age 66) Northern Ireland
Citizenship	British
Fields	Astrophysics
Alma mater	Glasgow (BSc), Cambridge (PhD)
Doctoral advisor	Antony Hewish
Known for	Discovering the first four pulsars
Influences	Fred Hoyle Frontiers of Astronomy (1955)
Notable awards	Fellow of the Royal Society (March 2003)
Religious stance	Quaker

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell, DBE, FRS, FRAS (born Susan Jocelyn Bell on 15 July 1943), known as Jocelyn Bell Burnell, is a British astrophysicist who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars with her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, for which Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Martin Ryle.

The paper announcing the discovery had five authors, Hewish's name being listed first, Bell's second. Dr. Hewish was awarded the Nobel Prize, along Dr. Ryle, without the inclusion of Bell as a co-recipient, which was controversial, and was roundly condemned by Hewish's fellow astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle.^[1] The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in their press release announcing the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics^[2], cited Ryle and Hewish for their pioneering work in radio-astrophysics, with particular mention of Ryle's work on aperture-synthesis technique, and Hewish's decisive role in the discovery of pulsars. Dr. Iosif Shklovsky, recipient of the 1972 Bruce Medal, had sought out Bell at the 1970 International Astronomical Union's General Assembly, to tell her "Miss Bell, you have made the greatest astronomical discovery of the twentieth century."^[3]

Contents 1 Background and family life 2 Academic career 3 Non-academic life 3.1 Quaker activities and beliefs 4 Honours 5 Further reading 6 References 7 External links 7.1 Video 7.2 Audio 7.3 Text 7.4 Transcripts

Background and family life

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where her father was an architect for the nearby Armagh Planetarium,^[4] she enjoyed the large library and was encouraged to read. She was especially drawn to the books on astronomy. She attended Lurgan College and lived in Lurgan as a child. She was one of the first girls at this college who was permitted to study science. Previously, the girls' curriculum had included such subjects as cross-stitching and cooking. At age eleven, she failed the 11+ exam and her parents sent her to the Mount School, York, a Quaker girls' boarding school.^[5] There she was impressed by a physics teacher who taught her:

"You don't have to learn lots and lots...of facts; you just learn a few key things, and...then you can apply and build and develop from those... He was a really good teacher and showed me, actually, how easy physics was."

Jocelyn Bell married Martin Burnell in 1968, and they have one son, Gavin Burnell, born in 1973, and two grandsons.

Academic career

Composite Optical/X-ray image of the Crab Nebula, showing synchrotron emission in the surrounding pulsar wind nebula, powered by injection of magnetic fields and particles from the central pulsar.

She graduated from the University of Glasgow with a B.Sc. physics in 1965 and completed her Ph.D. from the New Hall (since renamed Murray Edwards College) of the University of Cambridge in 1969. At Cambridge, she worked with Hewish and others to construct^[6] a radio telescope for using interplanetary scintillation to study quasars, which had recently been discovered (interplanetary scintillation allows compact sources to be distinguished from extended ones). In July 1967, she detected a bit of "scruff" on her chart-recorder papers that tracked across the sky with the stars. Ms. Bell found that the signal was pulsing with great regularity, about pulse per second. Temporarily dubbed "Little Green Man 1" (LGM-1) the source (now known as PSR B1919+21) was identified after several years as a rapidly rotating neutron star.

After finishing her Ph.D degree, Dr. Bell Burnell worked at the University of Southampton (1968-73), the University College London (1974-82), and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh (1982-91). In addition, from 1973 to 1987, Dr. Bell Burnell was also a tutor, consultant, examiner, and lecturer for the Open University.^[7] In 1991, Dr. Bell Burnell was appointed as a Professor of Physics at the Open University, a position that she held for ten years. She was also a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States. Before retiring, Dr. Bell Burnell was the Dean of Science at the University of Bath between 2001 and 2004,^[8] and she was the President of the Royal Astronomical Society between 2002 and 2004. She is currently a Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Mansfield College.^[9] Dr. Bell Burnell is the current President of the Institute of Physics.^[10]

Non-academic life

Bell is the house patron of Burnell House at Cambridge House Grammar School in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, and sits on the Advisory Board of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. She also gained a diploma of FRSM for piano playing.

She has campaigned to improve the status and number of women in professional and academic posts in the fields of physics and astronomy.^[11]

Quaker activities and beliefs

From her school days, Bell has remained an active Quaker and served as Clerk to the sessions of Britain Yearly Meeting in 1995, 1996 and 1997. She delivered a Swarthmore Lecture under the title Broken for life,^[12] at Yearly Meeting in Aberdeen on August 1, 1989, and was the plenary speaker at the U.S. Friends General Conference Gathering in 2000.

Bell revealed her personal religious history and beliefs in an interview with Joan Bakewell in 2006.^[13] She served on the Quaker Peace and Social Witness Testimonies Committee, which produced Engaging with the Quaker Testimonies: a Toolkit in February 2007,^[14] and wrote the introductory essay. She was appointed Clerk of the Central Executive Committee of Friends World Committee for Consultation for 2008–12, in August 2007.

Honours

Although she didn't share the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics with Hewish for her discovery, she has been honoured by many other organisations:

• The Albert Michelson Medal of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia (1973, jointly with Dr. Hewish).^[15]
• J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize from the Center for Theoretical Studies in Miami (1978).
• Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize of the American Astronomical Society (1987).
• Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1989).
• Karl G. Jansky Lectureship of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory(1995).^[16]
• Magellanic Premium of the American Philosophical Society (2000).^[17]
• Fellow of the Royal Society (March 2003).^[18]

She has been awarded numerous honorary degrees, for instance, recently:

• In 2007, Bell Burnell was awarded an honorary doctorate by Harvard University.^[19]
• On 23 June 2007, Bell Burnell was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Durham.

Bell Burnell also holds important awards in the British honours system. In 1999 Bell Burnell received a CBE from Queen Elizabeth II. In June 2007 she was awarded a DBE (equivalent to a male knighthood).^[20]

Further reading

Books

• Burnell, S. Jocelyn (1989). Broken for Life. London: Quaker Home Service. pp. 58pp. ISBN 0-85245-222-5.  (Swarthmore Lecture)
• dark matter: poems of space edited by Maurice Riordan and Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2008 ISBN 978-1-90308-10-8 ^[21]

Scientific papers

• Hewish, Antony; S J Bell, J D H Pilkington, P F Scott, R A Collins (24 February 1968). "Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source" (PDF). Nature 217: 709–713. doi:10.1038/217709a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v217/n5130/pdf/217709a0.pdf. Retrieved 2007-07-06. 
• J D H Pilkington; A Hewish, S J Bell, T W Cole (13 April 1968). "Observations of some further Pulsed Radio Sources" (PDF). Nature 218: 126–129. doi:10.1038/218126a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v218/n5137/pdf/218126a0.pdf. Retrieved 2007-07-06. 

For additional titles See Reference^[7]

References

1. ^ Judson, Horace (2003-10-20). "No Nobel Prize for Whining". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C02E4DE123EF933A15753C1A9659C8B63. Retrieved 2007-08-03. 
2. ^ 1974 Nobel Physics Prize committee press release
3. ^ Longair, Martin (2006). The Cosmic Century: A History of Astrophysics and Cosmology. Cambridge University Press. p. 196
4. ^ Johnston, Colin (March 2007). "Pulsar Pioneer visits us" (PDF). Astronotes (Armagh Planetarium): pp. 2-3. http://armaghplanet.com/pdf/Astronotes/Astronotes2007/Astronotes_Mar_2007.pdf. Retrieved 2009-07-10. 
5. ^ At Mount School 1956–61. She is the 2007 President of the Old Scholars' Association.
6. ^ "...upon entering the faculty, each student was issued a set of tools: a pair of plyers, a pair of long-nose plyers, a wire cutter, and a screwdriver...", said during a public lecture in Montreal during the 40 Years of Pulsars conference, August 14, 2007
7. ^ ^{a b} "Jocelyn Bell Burnell". Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics (CWP). http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/Phase2/Burnell,_Jocelyn_Bell@841234567.html. Retrieved 2007-07-07.  (biography at UCLA)
8. ^ University of Bath Press Release, announcing Bell Burnell's retirement
9. ^ "Queen's Birthday Honours 2007". University of Oxford. 18 June 2007. http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/news/2006-07/jun/18a.shtml. Retrieved 2007-07-10. 
10. ^ IoP website>Governance>Council. (accessed 1 May 2008)
11. ^ Article by Bell Burnell in Science:"So Few Pulsars, So Few Females" 23 April 2004: Vol. 304. no. 5670, p. 489 See also Belfast Telegraph's interview, at this time.
12. ^ Details of the print version of the lecture are given in the Bibliography
13. ^ Transcript of interview by Joan Bakewell for the BBC Radio 3 series "Belief" (2 January 2006)
14. ^ Engaging with the Quaker Testimonies: a Toolkit, 2007 ISBN 0-90168959-9
15. ^ Franklin Institute citation
16. ^ "Jansky Home Page". http://www.nrao.edu/jansky/janskyprize.shtml. Retrieved 2009-05-14. 
17. ^ Official list of Premium winners
18. ^ Royal Society article about Bell Burnell, with portrait
19. ^ Honorary degrees awarded at Commencement’s Morning Exercises, Harvard Crimson, June 7, 2007
20. ^ The Guardian Commentary on the Birthday Honours, 16 June 2007
21. ^ Press release on dark matter from the Gulbenkian Foundation

External links

Video

• Freeview video 'Tick, Tick, Pulsating Star: How I Wonder What You Are?' A Royal Institution Discourse by the Vega Science Trust(accessed 24 December 2007).
• Four video clips in which Bell Burnell gives a brief answer to the following questions: Having made a monumental discovery in science, how does that affect one's latter career? What was the process for discovering pulsars? Were you looking for them based on a theory, or were you trying to clarify a phenomenon? Where are your research interests focussed at the moment?What future discoveries do you expect in Astronomy? (BBC/Open University Masters of Science website) (accessed 24 December 2007).

Audio

• Counterbalance Library: Bell Burnell talk “ Science and the Spiritual Quest” (24 Minutes) (Not accessible 24 December 2007).

Text

• Contributions of 20th C women to physics: Burnell article. Procided by University of California at Los Angeles.
• Ferdinand V. Coroniti and Gary A. Williams (2006), "Jocelyn Bell Burnell" in Out of the Shadows: Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics, Nina Byers and Gary Williams, ed., Cambridge University Press.
• Catalogue entry of Royal Society citation (accessed 24 December 2007).
• Gale - Free Resources: Article on Bell Burnell from Encyclopedia of World Biography 1998. (Accessed 24 December 2007).
• UK Resource Centre for Women in Science Engineering Technology biographical webpage. (Accessed 24 December 2007).
• Biographical article, indicating Bell Burnell's beliefs and personal life, from California State Polytechnic University NOVA project. (Accessed 24 December 2007).
• Women in Science

• "Northern Star" (PDF). Programme information (BBC Northern Ireland): pp. 7-8. 13 June 2007. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/nations/northern_ireland/nipiwk24.pdf. Retrieved 2007-07-05.  (TV Documentary on Jocelyn Bell Burnell's life) (Not accessible online 24 December 2007).

Transcripts

• - An after-dinner speech by Jocelyn Bell Burnell on her life and the discovery of pulsars (accessed 24 December 2007).
• Transcript of interview by Joan Bakewell for the BBC Radio 3 series "Belief" (2 January 2006) (accessed 24 December 2007).

Persondata
NAME	Bell Burnell, Jocelyn
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bell, Susan Jocelyn; Bell Burnell, Professor Jocelyn; Bell Burnell, Dame Jocelyn; Burnell, Jocelyn (prior to divorce).
SHORT DESCRIPTION	astronomer, teacher, physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	15 July 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH	Northern Ireland
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

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