Acclaimed Physicist Bell Burnell Donates $3 Million Breakthrough Prize To More Women, Minorities & Refugees In Physics
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JOCELYN BELL BURNELL IS MADE A DAME COMMANDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE BY QUEEN ELIZABETH II AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE FOR SERVICES TO SCIENCE.
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is creating a scholarship for women, refugees and minorities to study physics, writes Carol Kuruvilla for Huff Po.
In 1974, Jocelyn Bell Burnell experienced sexism so ingrained in everyday university life that it seemed business as usual. Burnell's male PhD supervisor at the University of Cambridge Anthony Hewish, won a Nobel prize for Burnell's 1967 discovery of pulsars during a routine data collection she monitored at Cambridge. You might think that Hewish would have shared the award with Burnell, knowing the truth of her discovery.
This was not the way academia worked, Burnell told Science News in an interview on Thursday, the day the now acclaimed astrophysicist won an acclaimed science prize -- the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics and its $3 million award.
The award honors Bell Burnell for her hiscovery of pulsars -- neutron stars that emit electromagnetic radiation from their poles. The press release also recognized Burnell's “inspiring scientific leadership over the last five decades”.
