Jocelyn Bell Burnell

This project explores how the life of Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a British astrophysicist who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first four pulsars. Her discovery was given credit to Antony Hewish, her thesis supervisor; Hewish was awarded the Nobel Prize without the inclusion of Burnell as a co recipient. The complexity of pulsars will be addressed through schematic views as well as exemplars including the cycles in which the pulsars go through. Burnell's understanding of rapid set pulses occurring at regular intervals and position of unusual radio sources with respect to the stars was considered the greatest astronomical discovery of the twentieth century.