Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jim Al-Khalili talks to astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Jocelyn Bell Burnell forged her own path through the male-dominated world of science - in the days when it was unusual enough for women to work, let alone make a discovery in astrophysics that was worthy of a Nobel Prize. As a 24-year old PhD student, Jocelyn spotted an anomaly on a graph buried within 100 feet of printed data from a radio telescope. Her curiosity about such a tiny detail led to one of the most important discoveries in 20th century astronomy - the discovery of pulsars - those dense cores of collapsed stars. It's a discovery which changed the way we see the universe, making the existence of black holes suddenly seem much more likely and providing further proof to Einstein's theory of gravity. Jocelyn Bell Burnell was made a Dame in 2008 and a year later became the first ever female President of the Institute of Physics. Producer: Anna Buckley.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.
0:08.8	Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.7	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing.
0:26.0	Julie, at your service.
0:28.0	Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales.
0:31.6	Welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:34.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts.
0:39.0	There are still notoriously few female physicists, but my guest today forged her own path through the male-dominated
0:47.0	world of science.
0:48.8	Jocelyn Bell Bernell famously missed out on the 1974 Nobel Prize for physics.
0:54.8	Earlier this year, however, she was awarded the breakthrough prize for
0:58.0	fundamental physics, worth 2.3 million pounds.
1:01.8	She plans to spend all the prize money on improving diversity in science.
1:06.0	And when you've heard this interview about her life scientific recorded in 2011, I think you'll understand why.
1:12.0	It all began when as a 24 year old PhD student
1:16.8	Jocelyn spotted a tiny quarter inch smudge on a graph buried within three miles of printed data from a radio
1:26.1	telescope. Her supervisor Tony Hewish dismissed this bit of scruff as insignificant,
1:32.3	but she was determined to get to the bottom of it and
	...

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