In the world of science, awards are given to those scientists who make a great contribution to progress in studies in different fields. There are people who, despite having made a great effort to improve and contribute a lot to the scientific community, are not rewarded as they should. This is the case of the British Jocelyn Bell Burnell. There are many who think that, both within and outside the scientific community, she should have been awarded a Nobel Prize in 1974.
Why should scientist Jocelyn Bell Burnell have been awarded? Find out in this post.
Jocelyn bell burnell
She is a scientist who studied and made great progress with the discovery of pulsars. This Professor was invited to Oxford University and chosen as an award winner in the Fundamental Physics category. This award also provided a monetary award of approximately $3 million. However, this astrophysicist has no intention of keeping this sum for herself; instead, she will donate it to fund women, refugee students, and ethnic minority communities so they can become scientific researchers, especially in the field of physics, thus contributing to inclusion in the scientific field.
Biography
At just 12 years old, she already wanted to study physics and dedicate herself to it. This wasn't possible in the mid-50s, as women weren't allowed to work in such fields in Northern Ireland. The only things women could learn were cooking and embroidery. This woman had read her father's entire science library and managed to convince her headmaster to admit her to the physics class with two other girls. In just the first semester, she had already become the top of her class.
Despite the fact that he may have had enough problems to progress in physical studies, she was the only woman in the University of Glasgow. Every time she went up to the podium to present a work, many of the students would interrupt her with hisses and shouts. If she blushed because of these hisses, the boos would only increase. To deal with these situations, she learned to remain as cool as ice.
Years later, she was admitted to Cambridge. There was only one other student with her, and Jocelyn was constantly afraid of losing her enrollment. During her years at this university, she joined the radio astronomy department. Her thesis professor was searching for the brightest known objects in the universe, called quasars. These objects had to be searched for using radio waves. Jocelyn Bell Burnell participated in the construction of the telescope that was to detect these objects and was responsible for analyzing the data that was being obtained, a crucial task for the discovery of these phenomena.
He continued working for a long time until a second signal was detected shortly afterward. Several more signals followed. Finally, they were discovered to be pulsars. A pulsar is a neutron star and was first detected by Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
Discovery of Jocelyn Bell Burnell
This discovery It was published in 1968 when Jocelyn was 24 years old and she signed second place in the Nature magazine article. In the interviews she was given, she was simply asked about boyfriends she'd had or her bra size. This had nothing to do with all her scientific discoveries.
The invisibility accorded to this physicist reached its peak in 1974 when the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the discoverers of pulsars, which did not include this woman on the list. Many members of this scientific community were quite upset and even embarrassed that this scientist was not given credit simply because she was a woman.
However, this woman did not decide to give up, quite the opposite. His name was forgotten for many years until has been awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize. It's the highest prize awarded in the entire scientific world. She says she's made peace with the neglect she suffered and has chosen to fight on her own. She's been raising funds to help young people aspiring to science. It's her way of making up for the lapse that occurred with that Nobel Prize.
Scientist completely ignored
Women have always struggled to advance in the world of science, among other challenges they have faced. Fortunately, the importance of having diverse groups of men and women in both leadership and research groups is increasingly being recognized. This makes research groups more robust, flexible, and successful, a fact that allows for the achievements of individuals who may have previously been ignored.
Among the groups where women have been least represented throughout history is physics. It's safe to say that they've begun to include workers of different ethnicities, and it's wonderful that refugee students can benefit. And that's because The credit for Jocelyn Bell Burnell's pulsar discoveries went to scientists Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle 1974 the year.
As a research student, this scientist also helped build the radio telescope that led to the discovery of this new type of star, which they called pulsars. She was also the one who detected these strange radiations in the first analyses in 1967. To make this discovery, she had to convince her professors and supervisors, who were initially skeptical of her findings. This was because they believed these signals were produced by interference or by humans themselves.
Later it was discovered that it was a new type of stars that they called pulsars. Although the discoveries were mostly due to scientist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, He was completely ignored when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Sweden. Many people consider this to be one of the worst injustices committed in the history of the Nobel Prize winners.
