Today in the history of astronomy, the astrophysicist who would discover pulsars is born.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell delivers the keynote address for Science and Technology for Development panel for UN Trade and Development Conference in 2019. Credit: Jean-Philippe Escard of UNCTAD
- Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars in 1967.
- Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars.
- Bell Burnell initially nicknamed the signals “LGM” for “Little Green Men”.
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Born July 15, 1943, Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a British astrophysicist best known for her discovery of pulsars. In 1967, when she was a graduate student in radio astronomy at the University of Cambridge, Bell Burnell noticed “scruff” in the data she was reviewing from the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. Bell Burnell jokingly called this series of very regular radio pulses coming from a specific part of the sky “LGM,” for “Little Green Men”. Months later, she, her advisor Antony Hewish, and their team determined the signals were coming from rapidly spinning neutron stars, and the press dubbed them “pulsars.” A long career at several universities in the U.K. followed for Bell Burnell, as did many honors and prizes: Among them, she was president of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute of Physics, and received a Royal Medal and the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Today she is a visiting professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford and chancellor of the University of Dundee.
