Gold Medal for Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Quaker scientist receives Royal Astronomical Society award

by Rebecca Hardy 29th January 2021

The Quaker scientist Jocelyn Bell Burnell has been awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society 2021, following in the footsteps of former recipients including Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Arthur Eddington and Stephen Hawking. The medal recognises her ‘extraordinary achievements’ and has been awarded not only for her personal research but also for her contributions to the field of astronomy generally. The prominent astrophysicist was famously overlooked for her discovery of pulsar stars in 1967 when the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics went to her male PhD supervisor instead.