[MUSIC PLAYING] “I remember, when my brother
was born, people would say, ‘Isn’t it great that
Mrs. Bell has a boy now?’ As a small child, I
found that difficult. I knew I wanted to
be an astronomer. But at that stage, there
weren’t any women role models that I knew of. Even when I got
engaged to be married, many people would
congratulate me on that and say nothing about
making a major astrophysical discovery — pulsars.” “The discovery of
pulsars, for which U.K. —” “A girl —” “A girl —” “— wrote one of astronomy’s
most exciting discoveries.” “Of course, back then, nobody
knew what a pulsar was until I found the first two. I was born in Northern
Ireland, 1943. My father was an architect
for the observatory in Armagh. I was in secondary school,
enjoying it very much right from the beginning,
until the Wednesday of the first week. They sent
the boys to the science laboratory and the girls
to the cookery room because they were
going to be homemakers. I knew that wasn’t right. I tried protesting to the
domestic science teacher, but she wasn’t hearing
anything of it. But when I told my
parents that night, they hit the roof. As Quakers, we
believe there is something of God in everybody,
literally everybody. So everybody needed a
scientific education. The next time
the science class met, there were three
girls and all the boys. I was reading one of my
father’s library books, which was an astronomy
book, ‘Frontiers of Astronomy,’ by Fred Hoyle, the
famous astronomer. I knew, before I
left school, I wanted to be a radio astronomer. I went to University
of Glasgow in Scotland. I ended up being the only
female in a class of 50. And it was the tradition
that when a woman entered the lecture theater, all the
guys whistled, cat-called, banged their desks.” [BANGING] “I had to face
this on my own.” [WHISTLING] “It’s nasty, yes. If I hadn’t been clear
what I wanted to do, I would probably have
gone some other way. I rather belatedly put in
an application to Cambridge. I didn’t think I was
clever enough for this top university. But rather to my
surprise, I got in. ‘Oh, they’ve made a
mistake admitting me.’ ‘They’re going to discover
their mistake and throw me out.’ That's impostor syndrome. I got around it by deciding
I would work my very hardest, so that when they threw me
out, I wouldn’t have a guilty conscience. Tony Hewish had this
particular project to pick out compact
objects called quasars, the very hot topic. So the first job was to
build the radio telescope that I was to use. No, no, you're thinking of an
optical telescope that uses light. This is a radio
telescope that uses radio wavelengths to pick out
very, very distant objects. Some of the radio
telescopes are dishes. Ours was like an
agricultural frame. We had to carry a bundle
of about 20 cables that were 50 meters long. Then you’d yell,
‘Lift!’ They’d all lift, and ‘Right’ — this sort
of caterpillar of people carrying cables. It took about half a dozen
of us two years to build.” “The array rotated with the
Earth, scanning continuously, night and day, across the sky. And it was to be operated full
time by one person, a girl, a graduate student who helped
to build it, Jocelyn Bell.” “My presence as a female
student was an anomaly. The only other females
were the secretaries. At this stage, there was
nobody else on this project. It was Tony Hewish and I. He’s
the person who’s had the idea and he’s the person who’s got
the money to build the radio telescope, but it’s my Ph.D. I’m running the telescope,
and I’m analyzing the data. You end up with a
long chart with a sort of squiggly line on it. Ooh, there’s a big source. That’s routine chart analysis. And five minutes was
one inch, so one foot for a hour, 24 foot a day. And I had four chart recorders
going almost 100 foot a day. There was rather more
of that chart paper than I had imagined,
I must say, yes. One day I was looking
for quasars, and there was a signal there that
I couldn’t explain. It wasn’t a quasar. And it didn’t look like any
kind of interference that I’ve seen before. I shouldn’t be seeing
something like that. I wanted to understand
what it was. And I ended up taking
this problem to Tony. And he said that it
was interference. He had one idea, that
Jocelyn had wired up the radio telescope
wrongly and it was something to do with that. I kept observing. And this thing took up about
a quarter inch on the charts. You actually need
an enlargement to run the chart
faster under the pen so everything gets spread out. So I would go out
to the observatory, turn the chart
on to high speed while it should
have been there, at the appropriate time switch
the high-speed recording, and in comes pulse,
pulse, pulse. What is this? I telephoned Tony. I told them it was
a string of pulses one and a third seconds apart. His immediate reaction was,
‘Oh, well that settles it. It’s interference.’ I knew
it wasn’t interference. Next day, Tony came out. And he saw the pulses
with his own eyes. And it wasn’t interference. That started a whole new
research project, basically. What is it? How are we getting
this curious thing? Tony and I together,
we had some ideas. I was excited to be heavily
involved in discovering whatever this was. I went to ask Tony
something, and the door was shut, which
was most unusual. And I stumbled on a
discussion between Tony and Martin Ryle, the
head of the group, which in retrospect
was a discussion I think I should have been part
of right from the beginning. How do we publish this result? It’s incredibly hard to get
people to believe you’ve discovered something amazing
if you've only got one. I knew that finding more
would be the clincher. I’m back in the lab, doing
some routine chart analysis, and suddenly see something
that looks awful like that first pulsar had looked. I was convinced
we now had two. Tony gave a colloquium
in Cambridge. And every astronomer
in Cambridge came. [CHUCKLING] It was — Fred Hoyle, the
eminent astronomer that influenced me
when I was a schoolgirl was in the audience. Very exciting. Tony was doing the lecture,
announcing the discovery of this new radio source. Tony could have cited
me more and didn’t, but I was Miss
Bell, the student. Fred Hoyle was the
first to speak.” “This cosmic anarchist
is the most controversial of theorists.” “This is the first I’ve
heard of these things. I think it’s a
supernova remnant. Fred Hoyle hadn’t heard
of these things 45 minutes previously. But within that time, he has
assimilated the information and actually come up with the
right explanation, the one that turns out to be correct. Gradually it became
clearer and clearer that this was
hugely important. We wrote up a paper
announcing the first one. And when it was published, it
produced an enormous amount of interest.” “— are entirely new.” “The press would ask Tony
about the astrophysical significance of
this discovery.” “— how greater than a
planet could really —” “And then they turned to
me for what they called the human interest. How many boyfriends
did I have at once?” “Oh, yes. If there —” “Would I describe myself
as brunette or blond?” “Nothing in nature
could do this.” “What were my bust, waist
and hip measurements? How tall was I? The photographers
were the worst. They wanted me to undo
some buttons on my blouse.” “A girl, Jocelyn Bell —” “The popular press were
certainly putting me in the little girl,
sexually attractive role. I barely rated as a scientist. Tony just let it happen. It was dreadful. I was leaving because I was
going off to get married. My husband was
working elsewhere. So I had to move jobs,
and I left Cambridge. Nineteen seventy-four, I was working
in X-ray astronomy. And the satellite
we were to use was launching that morning. One of my colleagues came
rushing into my office, ‘Have you heard the news? Have you heard the news?’ I thought the satellite’s
gone, but it wasn’t. It was the announcement
of the Nobel Prize. “Prof. Anthony
Hewish, the discovery of pulsars, for which you
played a decisive role, is a most outstanding example
of how in recent years our knowledge of
the universe has been dramatically expanded.” “They’ve given the prize
jointly to Martin Ryle, who was the head of the
Cambridge Radio Astronomy Group, and to
Tony for pulsars. Fred Hoyle was quite
furious for me.” “And here we can
see Dr. Tony Hewish, who will tell us
more about it.” “When you plan a trip of
discovery and somebody at the masthead says,
‘Land ho,’ that’s great. But, I mean, who actually
inspired it and conceived it and decided what to
do, when and so on? I mean, there is a difference
between skipper and crew.” “I think the fact that I was
a graduate student and a woman together demoted my standing,
in terms of receiving a Nobel Prize. It didn’t bother me. I was actually pleased. I was really
pleased that pulsars were considered important
enough to rate a Nobel Prize. The very name “pulsar” is
an abbreviation of “pulsating radio star.” It’s the remains of a big star
that exploded near the end of its life. And this tiny
star is spinning. And as it spins, it sweeps
a radio wave round the sky. And if it shines in your face,
you see pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse. But if it doesn’t
shine in your face, you don’t see anything. Now, whether if
I'd stayed single, I think things might
have been very different. I think I would have been
offered a postdoctoral place in Cambridge. I would probably continued have working in radio astronomy the whole of my career and
be a much more narrow-minded astronomer as a result. But
I’ve actually had huge fun in my career. Even if it has not been a
string of prestigious jobs, it’s been a string of very,
very interesting jobs, usually working in great
places with great colleagues. July in 2018, I had a
phone call from Ed Witten, who’s a very eminent
Princeton physicist, saying that I’d won
this Breakthrough Prize for the discovery of pulsars. The reason I
discovered pulsars was because I was a
bit of an outsider who felt maybe not entitled
to be there and so on. And I thought if I
could give more minority people an opportunity
to do Ph.D.s, some exciting
things might emerge. Phone up the chief executive
of the Institute of Physics and say, ‘Hello, Paul. Could
the Institute of Physics use a $3 million award to provide
research studentships for people from minorities?’
And he didn’t hesitate. He said yes. Fred Hoyle influenced me and
turned me on to astronomy. It’s important to be
a good role model. I do think it’s important
that there are role models for young women. So, OK, I’ll be it.” [GENTLE MUSIC]
Big up to Fred Hoyle for recognising her role. I imagine she found that greater praise than anything.
As much as I can understand Hewish's point of view, it's pretty dismaying that the pre-eminent astronomer of his field could recognise her importance while he couldn't.
It's very much a symptom of the times to consider a subordinate as a mere tool.
But I still can't grasp how someone's human side doesn't scream out and allow people like this to at least say, 'this person helped'. His name would've been pushed regardless.
I didn't watch the video but read the wiki. Seems like she's not really upset about it at all. Her quote:
"I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them. Finally, I am not myself upset about it – after all, I am in good company, am I not!"
edit: Having watched the video now I'd say perhaps she wasn't upset at the time, and may not linger on it, but the video interview makes it pretty clear that she has at least some bitterness over the way things were handled by Hewish. And rightfully so, in my opinion. This kind of thing still happens and we have a lot of work to do to even the playing field in STEM for women. She is a pioneer in that sense and has become the role model she didn't have, for the next generations.
The guy who won the prize (Hewish) appears towards the end of the video and makes the following analogy: "When you plan a ship of discovery and somebody at the mast-head says 'land ho', that's great, but, I mean, who actually inspired it and conceived it..."
That analogy doesn't really work if said person shouts "land ho" and the captain ignores you repeatedly.. lol.
Wiki page about Jocelyn Bell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell
Would the pulsars have been discovered if not for her review of the data?
The recent posts on this subreddit have some strangely formatted titles, I'm not sure what to make of it
This was a well produced little documentary, thanks for sharing.
I hope that one day I have the class and integrity of this woman. She seems totally and utterly selfless. What a fantastic role model for anyone to look up to.
Thank you for this. The Breakthrough Prize is 3 times the Nobel Prize.
On the Big Bang Theory I learned they can give the Nobel prize to 3 people. So glad she got the better bigger prize.