Mar

An Evening With... Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell

by University of Bedfordshire

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Event description

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell delivers a fascinating lecture titled 'We Are Made of Star Stuff'.

About this Event

Have you ever wondered where the chemical elements in your body were formed; or how they got to be in you?

The University of Bedfordshire is delighted to host Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell to discuss the latest understanding of answers to such questions in her talk, 'We Are Made of Star Stuff'.

Dame Jocelyn is credited with one of the most significant scientific achievements of the 20th century - the discovery of the first radio pulsars - a type of star - as a postgraduate student.

A world-renowned, highly-decorated scientist, Dame Jocelyn is an inspiring academic who has excelled in a field not traditionally accessed by women.

Committed to improving accessibility to the sciences, the University is proud to host Dame Jocelyn's lecture and invites all those inspired by her work to register their attendance.

This is an online event. Registered individuals will be sent instructions of how to attend nearer the event date.

BIOGRAPHY

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell inadvertently discovered pulsars as a graduate student in Radio Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, opening up a new branch of astrophysics - work recognised by the award of a Nobel Prize to her supervisor.

She has subsequently worked various roles in many branches of astronomy, working part-time while raising a family. She is now a Visiting Academic at the University of Oxford, and the Chancellor of the University of Dundee.

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 that 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’.