Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell : A Quaker Astronomer Reflects

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a Quaker (a member of the Religious Society of Friends) and a professional astronomer and will talk about how these combine in her life.

Bell Burnell grew up in Lurgan, Co. Armagh. Her father was an architect who helped design Armagh Planetarium. In 1967, as a postgraduate student at the University of Cambridge, she discovered pulsars – rotating neutron stars that appear to pulse as the radio beam they emit sweeps repeatedly across the Earth. The discovery is considered to be one of the greatest astronomical discoveries of the 20th century.

She has received many honours and awards for her contributions to science. These include the Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1989 and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 2015. In 2021 she received the Royal Society’s prestigious Copley Medal, the world’s oldest scientific prize, joining past winners including Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Dorothy Hodgkin.

Bell Burnell has served as President of the Royal Astronomical Society (2002–2004), the Institute of Physics (2008–2010) and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2014–2018). Made a Dame in 2007, she is currently a Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and Chancellor of Dundee University.