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Jocelyn Bell Burnell, astrophysicist, with her Prudential Lifetime Achievement Award at the Women of the Year Awards 2015 at the InterContinental London. (Photo file)
LONDON (AP) – One of Britain's leading astrophysicists is donating $ 3 million worth of a major science prize to encourage diversity in physics.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell says the money will go to the Institute of Physics to fund graduate scholarships for people from underrepresented groups – women, members of ethnic minorities and refugees.
She told the BBC that people belonging to minority groups bring "a new perspective on things and that this is often very productive. Many breakthroughs, she added, "come from the left field".
Bell Burnell won the Breakthrough Award in Fundamental Physics Thursday for his role in the discovery of radio pulsars. The discovery of rotating neutron stars won a Nobel Prize in physics in 1974, but two of Bell Burnell's male colleagues were named winners.
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