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Jocelyn Bell Burnell should have won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for discovering pulsars. More than 50 years later, she was finally awarded a special prize for fundamental physics, which was presented to her with a prize of $ 3 million. ( pixabay )
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who should have won a Nobel Prize in 1974 for his discovery of pulsars, was finally rewarded with a prize of $ 3 million.
Bell Burnell, who was one of the most important examples of women scientists who were not recognized for their contribution, decided to give this money to a good cause.
Bell Burnell should have won the Nobel Prize in 1974
Bell Burnell was a Cambridge student in 1967, working with her supervisor Antony Hewish on a thesis on strange objects found in distant galaxies known as quasars.
A radio telescope that they built recorded data on quasar observations, pushing back every day 96 feet of graph paper with a line in red ink. Bell Burnell is reminded to have seen "an unclassifiable gaffing", which Hewish initially rejected as an artificial radio interference. However, the source of the scribbles has turned out to be what are now called pulsars, which are neutron stars that spin rapidly and emit radiation.
The discovery of pulsars, considered one of the most important astronomical discoveries of the 20th century, received a Nobel Prize in 1974. Unfortunately, it was only awarded to Hewish and not to Bell Burnell, the first to have observed and analyzed them.
Bell Burnell receives an outstanding prize and $ 3 million
Today, more than 50 years after his important role in the discovery of pulsars, Bell Burnell has been rewarded with a special prize in basic physics as well as a prize of $ 3 million. In comparison, the 1974 Nobel Prize awarded $ 124,000 to two winners, or about $ 620,000 after adjusting for inflation.
Originally founded in 2012, the Breakthrough Award is intended to be considered "The Oscars of Science". It is funded by leading names in Silicon Valley, including Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner, offering the world's largest monetary science awards. Past winners include the late Stephen Hawking, the scientists behind the discovery of the Higgs boson and the team that detected the gravitational waves.
"The discovery of pulsars by Jocelyn Bell Burnell will always be one of the big surprises in the history of astronomy," said committee chairman Edward Witten.
Bell Burnell does not, however, encroach on the $ 3 million price. Instead, she will make a donation to create a fund that will help women, ethnic minorities and refugee students become physics researchers.
"I do not want or do not need the money myself and it seemed to me that was perhaps the best use I could make," Bell Burnell told BBC News.
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