This week on the function room, my guest is Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered a NEW TYPE OF STAR.
That’s like discovering A NEW TYPE OF STAR
Jocelyn was a postgraduate student at the time and famously her supervisor was awarded the Nobel Prize for radio pulsars, and there was no mention of Jocelyn. Even though she helped build the Interplanetary Scintillation Array – the thing that found it- over two years and she was the one who first noticed the weird data the was the radio pulsar, sometimes reviewing nearly 100ft of paper.
That is just one part of a long career and distinguished career. We talk about that and sexism in science, religion in science, and the perils of managing big data 1960s style and at the end inspired by Jocelyn, my daughters and I look up at the stars.

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