Jocelyn Bell 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]
Nationality	British
Education	Lurgan College The Mount School, York
Alma mater	University of Glasgow (BSc) University of Cambridge (PhD)
Known for	Co-discovering the first four pulsars[7]
Spouse	Martin Burnell ​ ​ (m. 1968; div. 1993)​
Children	Gavin Burnell
Awards	J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize (1978) Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize (1986) Herschel Medal (1989) Michael Faraday Prize (2010) Royal Medal (2015) Grande Médaille (2018) Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2018) Copley Medal (2021) Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (2021) Prix Jules Janssen (2022) Cunningham Medal (2023)
Scientific career
Fields	Astrophysics
Institutions	University of Bath University of Cambridge University of Glasgow Open University University of Oxford Royal Observatory, Edinburgh University of Southampton University College London
Thesis	The Measurement of radio source diameters using a diffraction method (1968)
Doctoral advisor	Antony Hewish[1][2][3]
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell's voice from the BBC programme The Life Scientific, 19 December 2018.[8]
Website	www2.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]