In BRLSI News..
Co-discoverer of the Pulsar to
visit BRLSI

BRLSI's Herschel Astronomy Group welcomes a scientist of global stature on Friday July 3rd, when Prof Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell FRS (pictured right), co-discoverer of the Pulsar, will introduce a screening of the Ulster TV documentary A Northern Star, about her life and work in astrophysics.

While a postgraduate student at Cambridge, Bell Burnell helped to construct a radio telescope to study quasars. In 1967 she spotted a 'bit of scruff' moving across the sky, and found that it was pulsing once a second. Later identified as a rapidly rotating neutron star, it became the first known Pulsar. Her supervisor was awarded a joint Nobel Prize for its discovery, amidst controversy over Bell Burnell's omission from the award.

A former President of the Royal Astronomical Society, Prof Bell Burnell was Dean of Science at the University of Bath between 2001 and 2004, and is currently Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and President of the Institute of Physics. As well as introducing A Northern Star, she will answer questions on the topics it raises.

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