Jocelyn Bell Burnell

This British surname is barrelled, being made up of multiple names. It should be written as Bell Burnell, not Burnell.

Professor
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell
DBE FRS FRSE FRAS FInstP
Bell Burnell in 2009
Born
Susan Jocelyn Bell

(1943-07-15) 15 July 1943 (age 81)[4]
Lurgan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland[5][6]
NationalityBritish
Education
Alma mater
Known forCo-discovering the first four pulsars[7]
Spouse
Martin Burnell
​
​
(m. 1968; div. 1993)​
ChildrenGavin Burnell
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsAstrophysics
Institutions
ThesisThe Measurement of radio source diameters using a diffraction method (1968)
Doctoral advisorAntony Hewish[1][2][3]
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell's voice
from the BBC programme The Life Scientific, 19 December 2018.[8]
Websitewww2.physics.ox.ac.uk/contacts/people/bellburnell

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (/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]

  1. ^ Bell 1968.
  2. ^ Hewish et al. 1968, p. 709.
  3. ^ Pilkington et al. 1968, p. 126.
  4. ^ Who's Who 2017.
  5. ^ Lurgan Mail 2007.
  6. ^ Bain 2022.
  7. ^ Bell Burnell 2007, pp. 579–581.
  8. ^ The Life Scientific 2011.
  9. ^ Cosmic Search Vol. 1.
  10. ^ Hargittai 2003, p. 240.
  11. ^ Tesh & Wade 2017, pp. 31–33.
  12. ^ Sample 2018.
  13. ^ Kaplan & Farzan 2018.
  14. ^ Ghosh 2019.
  15. ^ IoP 2019.
  16. ^ BBC: Copley 2021.