Portrait of astrophysicist Jocelyn Burnell

The Royal Society unveiled a new portrait of astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell who is credited with discovering pulsars when she was a PhD student at Cambridge University.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2020

Key-Points

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (born 1943) is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967.

She was credited with “one of the most significant scientific achievements of the 20th century”.

The discovery was recognised by the award of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics, but although she was the first to observe the pulsars, Bell was not one of the recipients of the prize.

That Bell did not receive recognition in the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics has been a point of controversy ever since.

A pulsar is a highly magnetized rotating compact star (usually neutron stars but also white dwarfs) that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles.