Bursts, bangs and things that go bump in the night

https://www.youtube.com/live/WTWJbRTCqf4

With improvements in telescopes and detectors, astronomers no longer have to use long exposures (or long integration times). We are now seeing short-duration events, and variability on short time scales, in many branches of astronomy. This talk will describe some of the more amazing or surprising things we are finding.

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a pioneering Northern Irish astrophysicist who, as a postgraduate student in 1967, discovered the first radio pulsars.

Bell Burnell has had a distinguished career, holding positions such as Professor of Physics at the Open University and Dean of Science at the University of Bath. She was the first female President of the Institute of Physics and the first female President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She is a staunch advocate for women and underrepresented minorities in science, notably co-founding the Athena SWAN initiative.

Major Awards and Philanthropy: She has received numerous accolades, including a Damehood in 2007, the Royal Society’s Copley Medal in 2021, and the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2018. She donated the entire $3 million Breakthrough Prize money to establish the Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund, which supports physics postgraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s work not only opened up a new field of astrophysics but has also made her an inspirational figure for aspiring scientists worldwide.