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Bell Burnell: Physics star gives away £2.3m prize
One of the UK's leading female astronomers is to donate her £2.3m winnings from a major science prize she was awarded. The sum will go to fund women, under-represented ethnic minority and refugee students to become physics researchers.
Prof Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell has been awarded a Breakthrough Prize for the discovery of radio pulsars. This was also the subject of the physics Nobel in 1974, but her male collaborators received the award. The Breakthrough award also recognises her scientific leadership.
Prof Bell Burnell believes that under-represented groups - who will benefit from the donation - will bring new ideas to the field. "I don't want or need the money myself and it seemed to me that this was perhaps the best use I could put to it," she told BBC News. Prof Bell Burnell's story has been both an inspiration and motivation for many female scientists. As a research student when pulsars were discovered, she was not included in the Nobel prize citation - despite having been the first to observe and analyse the astronomical objects (a type of neutron star that emits a beam of radiation).
Also at NPR and Live Science.
(Score: 3, Informative) by eof on Friday September 07 2018, @10:19PM (3 children)
There is precedent for a Nobel Prize being awarded to a graduate student. Brian Josephson was awarded one in the early 70s for work he did as a graduate student in the early 60s. There may be other examples; I'd have to think about it. I don't know if sexism played a role in Burnell's case, but being a graduate student was not a disqualifier. Fortunately, she seems ok with the way things played out.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 07 2018, @11:12PM (2 children)
I seem to recall being told by faculty at the local astronomy department that Bell Burnell faced some resistance when she suggested that these strange signals were not a terrestrial artifact. At first, her adviser didn't believe it; it was on her to prove that it had to be extra-terrestrial. She stuck to her guns and proved her case. In that light, it seems like she is the one who truly deserved the Nobel prize for this discovery.
Just because she is OK with how things played out doesn't mean that it actually is OK. I do think it's really classy that she is giving her prize money for the education of the next generation, particularly for those under-represented in STEM.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @02:37AM (1 child)
Then again, an advisor's role is to be skeptical of student-generated data. If pulsars weren't discovered yet, you'd think the signals were human. Still, kudos to her for helping expand human knowledge. That must have been an amazing rush.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @11:31AM
Then a terrible letdown as others take the credit