Bell Burnell, Jocelyn (1943-…), a British astronomer, was the first person to detect a pulsar. A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star, a star made mainly of neutrons or perhaps of elementary particles called quarks. The pulsar sends out beams of radio waves and other electromagnetic radiation. The beams sweep over Earth at regular intervals.
Bell first observed a pulsar while a graduate student at the University of Cambridge in England in 1967. While using a new radio telescope, she noted pulses coming from an unknown source, later identified as a new type of star. Her observations, and further work with Cambridge astronomer Antony Hewish, proved the existence of neutron stars. Since the 1930’s, astronomers had believed that neutron stars existed. The discovery of pulsars gave rise to many new ideas about the origin and development of stars.
Susan Jocelyn Bell was born on July 15, 1943, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge in 1968. In 1986, she became a senior scientific officer at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland. From 1991 to 2001, she worked as a professor of physics at the United Kingdom’s Open University. From 2002 to 2004, she served as vice president of the Royal Astronomical Society in London.
