The character arc of Jocelyn Bell Burnell
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born on 15 July 1943 in Lurgan, County Armagh, the eldest of four. Between then and now sit a father who was an architect and helped design a planetarium, a school where girls were expected to study cooking and cross-stitch until her parents challenged it, a failed eleven-plus, a Quaker boarding school in York, a physics degree at Glasgow in 1965, a radio telescope she helped build at Cambridge, the discovery of the pulsar in 1967, a 1974 Nobel Prize she was not part of, two learned society presidencies, a Copley Medal, and a three million dollar prize given away. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Jocelyn Bell Burnell?
She failed the eleven-plus. Then she found pulsars.
She grew up at a house called Solitude in Lurgan with a younger brother and two younger sisters. She read her father books on astronomy and visited the nearby Armagh Observatory, where the staff encouraged her to go into it; her father, an architect, later helped design the planetarium there.
At her school, boys could study technical subjects and girls were expected to study domestic ones, cooking and cross-stitch among them. She was only able to study science after her parents and others challenged the school policy, which is a thing worth sitting with: the entire rest of this page depends on somebody complaining to a headmaster.
She failed the eleven-plus. Her parents sent her to a Quaker girls boarding school in York, where she finished her secondary education in 1961 and where a physics teacher changed how she saw the subject. Her account of him: you do not have to learn lots and lots of facts, you just learn a few key things and then you can apply and build and develop from those, and he showed her how easy physics was.
She took a physics degree at Glasgow in 1965 and went to Cambridge, where she worked with Antony Hewish and others to build a radio telescope. In 1967, while conducting research for her doctorate, she discovered the pulsar. She took her PhD in 1969. The discovery was recognised by the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974. She was not among its recipients.
What she did afterwards is a career of running things. She was president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002 to 2004, president of the Institute of Physics from October 2008 to October 2010 and again as interim president after the death of her successor in early 2011, and Chancellor of the University of Dundee from 2018 to 2023. In 2018 she was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, worth three million dollars, and decided to use all of it to establish a fund helping women, minority and refugee students become research physicists, administered by the Institute of Physics. In 2021 she became the second woman ever to receive the Copley Medal, and in 2025 her image went on a stamp.
The moments
Jocelyn Bell Burnell's timeline.
The 1940s
Born at Solitude
Everyday. A house in County Armagh called Solitude.
The 1950s
Her father books on astronomy
Milestone, and it changed her direction. An observatory down the road, and the staff said yes.
Girls did cross-stitch
Setback, and it changed everything. Her parents had to argue with the school to let her do science.
She fails the eleven-plus
Setback, and it changed everything. She failed the exam that was supposed to sort her.
A teacher called Mr Tillott
Milestone, and it changed everything. One teacher, and her own account of what he did.
The 1960s
Physics at Glasgow
Milestone, and it changed her direction. An honours degree in physics, from the failed eleven-plus.
Building the telescope
Milestone, and it changed everything. She helped build the instrument that found it.
She discovers the pulsar
Milestone, and it changed everything. A graduate student, and one of the discoveries of the century.
Her doctorate
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The thesis, finished after the discovery.
The 1970s
The Nobel goes elsewhere
Setback, and it changed everything. The prize was given for her discovery and not to her.
The 2000s
President of the Royal Astronomical Society
Milestone, and it changed everything. The society, run by her.
President of the Institute of Physics
Milestone, and it changed her direction. She did the job twice, the second time because somebody died.
The 2010s
Keep the prize money, or give it away
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: put all of it into a fund, taken, or keep it. The fund is administered by the Institute of Physics and is still putting women, minority and refugee students through physics research.
Three million dollars, given away
Milestone, and it changed everything. The whole prize, straight into a fund for other people.
Chancellor of Dundee
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Five years as chancellor.
The 2020s
The Copley Medal
Milestone, and it changed everything. Only the second woman ever to get it.
The fund she set up with the prize money is still putting women, minority and refugee students through physics doctorates. What she set moving is the most direct answer anybody has given to being left off a Nobel citation, which was to wait fifty years and then pay for other people to get in.
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Jocelyn Bell Burnell: frequently asked questions
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Sources
- Jocelyn Bell Burnell, English Wikipedia biography, filed under living people.
- Her own account of her physics teacher at The Mount School, as quoted there.
- The Nobel Prize in Physics 1974 citation and recipient record.
- The Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, 2018, and the fund it created.