Robert McNeesAstrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born #OTD in 1943. As a grad student at Cambridge in 1967, she discovered an entirely new type of celestial object: Pulsars!
Photo: National Science & Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library
Bell was a graduate student in 1967 when she and her doctoral advisor Antony Hewish constructed a low frequency radio array to study the effect of the solar wind on nearby radio sources.
During the commissioning phase of their array, while analyzing long readouts of data by hand, Bell discovered a regular signal with a very stable period of about 1.33s.
Bell and Hewish quickly ruled out a problem with the instrument or human-made interference as explanations.
Imagine seeing that remarkably regular signal and not knowing of an astrophysical source that might explain it.
They jokingly nicknamed it LGM-1, for "Little Green Men."
Here is a transcript of Jocelyn Bell Burnell's after-dinner speech at the Eighth Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, recounting the discovery.
The sources were soon identified as rotating, magnetized neutron stars. A tightly collimated beam of radiation is ejected along the neutron star's magnetic axis. We see regular pulses as it rotates, hence the name "pulsar."
The discovery of pulsars provided an extraordinary new laboratory for physics. For example, a gradual decay in the orbit of the pulsar-neutron star binary PSR B1913+16 matches the prediction of general relativity, with energy lost via gravitational waves.
Image: NASA
Antony Hewish received the Nobel Prize in 1974 for his "decisive role in the discovery of pulsars." In a move that can only be described as gratuitous sexism, the Nobel Committee decided not to include Jocelyn Bell Burnell on the prize.
A younger graduate student (Brian Josephson) had received a share of the prize the previous year, so it's not like there was a prohibition against awarding students.
But that's not all. It gets worse.
In 1974, the year Hewish got the prize, there was another important pulsar discovery.
That year, Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor discovered an important binary pulsar pair. They were rightly awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for this discovery!
Russel Hulse was 24 year old graduate student at the time, just like Jocelyn Bell Burnell when she made her discovery. Taylor was Hulse’s advisor.
But Hulse was a man, so he was given a share of the prize.
The Nobel folks always leave this bit out.
"Although I was not included, I celebrated that first award in 1974 of the Physics Prize for an astronomical discovery. Now I celebrate the fact that we have a better understanding of the teamwork necessary for scientific progress."
Jocelyn Bell Burnell has received just about every other award under the sun, including the 2018 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. She used the prize money —about £2.3 million— to establish a scholarship for white women, minority, and refugee students in physics.
Anyway, happy 80th birthday to Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars!
Important pulsar fact!
The cover of the Joy Division album "Unknown Pleasures" was adapted from a plot that radio astronomer Harold Craft made for his PhD dissertation, using data collected at Arecibo while studying the pulsar discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
I know this is a tangent, but here's an excellent Scientific American piece explaining how the album cover came about.
And here is a short documentary where Peter Saville explains how he designed the cover after seeing Craft's plot in a copy of the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. The video uses the same image of Jocelyn Bell Burnell that I included in the first post.
The Story of Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" Album Design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reEQye0EOAw&t=1s
Pop Culture Pulsar: Origin Story of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures Album Cover [Video]
Sure, I was familiar with the graphic—and I’m not alone. Drop this image (right) on someone’s desk and chances are they’ll reflexively blurt, “Joy Division.” The band’s 1979 Unknown Pleasures album cover leaned entirely on a small mysterious data display, printed in white on black.
☝️ Today a physics major came to class wearing an "Unknown Pleasures" shirt and I got to tell her about the image on the album cover.
whereisk@mcnees brilliant write up Robert - and the tangents well worth it.
BettinaKoza@mcnees
I love this cover and I love the whole album.
I love this cover and I love the whole album.
Stargeezer Smith@mcnees
Was it astronaut Gordon Cooper who said:
You don't have to be the best known to be the best?
STEMcoding Project@mcnees I really think the Nobel committee should be able to modify earlier awards to correct injustices like these. Thanks for sharing that screenshot of the Nobel social media post. It's just salt on the wound.
Michael Porter@mcnees Posts like these from the Nobel committee should have an addendum at the bottom, “And once again, sorry to Jocelyn Bell Burnell, whose grace in spite of our embarrassing chauvinism deserves far more than the measly $25,000 she would have gotten from us. Some day we will do better.”
Juan Cabanela@mcnees The 1993 award was given in the shadow of Burnell having being shafted for the Nobel as a graduate student. I strongly suspect Hulse got the award more because the Nobel folks didn’t want to shaft another graduate student than solely because Hulse was male (they may have been influenced by Hulse being male). Taylor invited Burnell to be his guest when accepting the award, so pretty sure that this was part of it.
Akshay@Juan_Kinda_Guy @mcnees They were happy to give a Nobel to Lawrence Bragg in 1915, in spite of being the then equivalent of a graduate student!
AstroMike@Juan_Kinda_Guy @Akshay @mcnees Exactly. The Nobel committee got a lot of flack almost immediately. For example, from Sir Fred Hoyle. From Wikipedia:
“Yes, Jocelyn Bell was the actual discoverer, not Hewish, who was her supervisor, so she should have been included." This remark received widespread international coverage. Worried about being misunderstood, Hoyle carefully composed a letter of explanation to The Times.”
@mcnees IIRC it was seen as blatant sexism even at the time!
Chien-Shiung Wu and Lise Meitner would be other Nobel snubs which embarrassed even their male contemporaries.
Vera Rubin missing out is a head-scratcher, though not sure it was sexist, and I guess nobody understood Noether’s Theorem…