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A British astrophysicist who made one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the 20th century but was overlooked by the Nobel Prize Committee, has joined the Royal Society’s male-dominated portrait collection.
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was a 24-year-old graduate student when in 1967 she discovered a new type of star later called a pulsar. It was a sensational discovery, recognized with the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics that went not to her, but to her male doctoral supervisor.
She has since been a pioneering advocate for women and the marginalized in science and was the first woman to be president of the Institute of Physics.
On Saturday she became one of the few female scientists to be celebrated with a portrait on the walls of the Royal Society’s Carlton House Terrace headquarters in central London, occupying a seat currently occupied by naturalist Joseph Banks.
“I’m sure it will upset some guys,” she said, chuckling, when the Guardian told her about her position at the top of the grand staircase. “It’s really important, I have to say, I’m surprised at this.”
The Royal Society has around 200 portraits of scientists in its main collection, which began in the 17th century. Only a handful are women.
“They only admitted women 75 years ago, so it’s perhaps not surprising that there aren’t many women represented,” Bell Burnell said. “But it needs to be fixed.
“I think they commissioned about four or five portraits of women [in recent years], so until they stop there and think “right, we did it” and we have to wait another 75 years “.
Stephen Shankland’s portrait shows Bell Burnell at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, in front of a 36-inch Grubb-Parsons mirrored telescope, the largest of its kind in the 1930s.
It was unveiled to celebrate the 53-year-old date she discovered a new type of star while still a student at Cambridge.
Bell Burnell has always been in a good mood about the Nobel Prize going to a man. He said the Nobel committee rarely involved students in the awards.
“From time to time, so it’s not a complete taboo, but it’s not common. Inevitably, older males are much more visible than a college graduate student, so you can understand what was going on.
“My colleagues, I think, were a little angrier than me … they labeled it the no-belle prize.”
There was compensation in 2018 when he received the $ 3 million (£ 2.3 million) Breakthrough Award in fundamental physics for his work on pulsars and a life of inspirational leadership in the scientific community. He gave the money to the Institute of Physics to fund PhD scholarships for underrepresented people in physics.
Bell Burnell has experienced sexism in her career, she said. “It was pretty bad, particularly in the 70s and 80s. It was very unusual for a woman to have even just a career at that point. That was the moment when if you went to the doctor with some ailment he would say, “Everything will be fine when you have a dear baby.” “
Until 1945, the Royal Society’s art collection contained only one woman: a bust of the Scottish scientist Mary Somerville.
Keith Moore, the head of art at the Royal Society, said: “We are very excited that the portrait of Dame Jocelyn will take its rightful place alongside those of the most distinguished scientists of all time. It is a true role model, so much so that it is admired both in person and in pigment. “
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