Scientist whose boss won the Nobel Prize for his work gives a new prize of $ 3 million

In 1974, Jocelyn Bell Burnell's doctoral director at the University of Cambridge received a Nobel Prize for a discovery that she was the first to notice. On Thursday, the 75-year-old astrophysicist won a coveted scientific award: the special prize for fundamental physics.

But instead of keeping the $ 3 million price that comes with this distinction, Bell Burnell says it will use it to help women, refugees, and other minority students follow in their footsteps and become researchers in physics.

The Institute said in a statement that it would award its prize to the Institute of Physics to create scholarships for people from under-represented groups.

Bell Burnell, a Quaker whose religion teaches simple life, says she does not need to have an extravagant lifestyle.

"I do not want or need the money myself and it seemed to me that was perhaps the best use I could make," Bell Bell told the BBC.

The award honors Bell Burnell for his discovery of pulsars – neutron stars that emit electromagnetic radiation from their poles. These rapidly rotating radiation beams pass at regular intervals over the Earth. The award also recognizes his "inspiring scientific leadership over the past five decades," according to a press release.

Bell Burnell first noticed pulsars during a routine data collection in 1967, with the help of a radio telescope that she was responsible for monitoring in Cambridge. His supervisor, Antony Hewish, eventually won a Nobel Prize for his discovery.

At the time, the company was convinced that scientific advances had been led by men, Bell Burnell told the Washington Post. Women, meanwhile, had to study cooking and needlework.

"It's such a firm assumption that it was not even discussed, so there was no choice in this," said the scientist.

Bell Burnell, born in Northern Ireland in 1943, spent many years as a single woman in a male dominated field. She said she had to fight to take science classes after the age of 12. At the University of Glasgow, she was the only student in her physics class.

Men were not always welcoming, she said.

"There was a tradition among students that when a woman came into a conference room, all the guys would whistle and whistle and call and hit the office," she told the Belfast Telegraph at the time. an interview in 2007. "And I have faced that for every course I have entered during my last two years."

When she was accepted to Cambridge, Bell Burnell was apparently plagued by the impostor syndrome, she told The Post. After getting engaged, her colleagues assumed that she would soon be leaving the program, as it was not customary for married women to work.

When her supervisor was awarded a Nobel Prize for her work on the pulsars she first noticed, Bell Burnell said she was not disturbed. In those days, she said, the teachers had all the credit.

"At that time, the picture of science was that of an elderly man, and he was always a man, with a fleet of young people working for him," she said at Science News in an interview published Thursday. "And if the project went well, the man received praise. If the project went wrong, the man was blamed.

"The youngest working under his orders were isolated from all this. It seemed to me to be part of this scheme of work, "she added.

Bell Burnell has become one of the leading astronomers in the UK and a model for women scientists. His discovery of pulsars opened a whole new branch of astrophysics. She has won numerous awards during her career and has received honorary degrees from at least 36 institutions. She was the first woman president of the Institute of Physics, a global society of physics, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an educational charity. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2007 and currently teaches astronomy at Oxford University.

The awards for excellence reward scientists who have made important contributions in the areas of fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics. The awards are sponsored by Facebook's co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin, and others. It's only the fourth time this award has been awarded – among previous winners include the famous physicist Stephen Hawking and the team that discovered the Higgs boson particle.

Bell Burnell will be honored at a ceremony on November 4th.

She told the BBC that she thought her motivation was to be a minority in the field – that is why she wants to encourage more women, refugees and underrepresented ethnic minorities to attend. to study physics

"I have this intuition that members of minorities bring a new angle to things and it is often a very productive thing," she said. "In general, many breakthroughs come from the left field."