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2023 Ta-You Wu Lecture
in Physics
(Held in 2024)
Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (University of Dundee)
The Discovery of Pulsars
Talk Abstract: A grad student notices something that she cannot explain…it’s not a fault with the equipment…then there’s a second…and yet more…A story from radio astronomy that marks the beginning of pulsar research.
Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the discoverer of the first radio pulsars, one of the most important astronomical discoveries of the 20th Century. She has received numerous awards and honors and is a devoted advocate for women in science.
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
4:00-5:00 PM
Location: Rackham Amphitheatre (4th Floor)
University of Michigan Ann Arbor Campus
Seating Began at 3:30 PM!
This event was live-streamed
on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArK7AuX-iiQ.
Prior to the lecture, there was a reception in the Rackham Assembly Hall, located across the hall from the Amphitheatre on the fourth floor.
The reception began at 3:30 p.m.
Biography
Jocelyn Bell Burnell inadvertently discovered pulsars as a graduate student in radio astronomy at Cambridge, opening up a new branch of astrophysics - work recognized by the award of a Nobel Prize to her supervisor.
She has subsequently worked in many roles in many branches of astronomy, working part-time while raising a family. She is now a Visiting Academic in Oxford. She has been President of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society; in 2008, became the first female President of the Institute of Physics for the UK and Ireland, and in 2014, the first female President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was one of the small group of women scientists who set up the Athena SWAN scheme.
She has received many honours, including a $3M Breakthrough Prize in 2018.
The public appreciation and understanding of science have always been important to her, and she is much in demand as a speaker and broadcaster. In her spare time, she gardens, listens to choral music, and is active in the Quakers. She has co-edited an anthology of poetry with an astronomical theme – ‘Dark Matter; Poems of Space.’
