Jocelyn Bell Burnell

1943, Belfast (Ireland). Astrophysicist, she graduated from the University of Glasgow with a BSc degree in Natural Philosophy (Physics) in 1965, and obtained her PhD from University of Cambridge in 1969. As a postgraduate student at Cambridge, she discovered the first radio pulsars with her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, for which Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. After finishing her PhD, she worked in many universities and institutions in Britain while raising a family, and was also a visiting professor at Princeton University in the USA. She is currently a Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Mansfield College Oxford, a pro- Chancellor at Trinity College Dublin and President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She has also served as President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002- 2004, and as President of the Institute of Physics (2008-2011). Although Bell was not included as a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize, which stoked some controversy at the time, she has been honoured by many organizations.