Post by @mythologyandhistory@mas.to

2025-10-04 04:35 UTC

It&#39;s 1967 &amp; she&#39;s 24 years old. It had taken her 3 months to go through the chart-recorder paper manually. She had helped build the radio #telescope that picked up the waves. There was a pulsating signal, regular; it turned out to be a #pulsar. Her supervisor didn&#39;t believe her. She insisted it&#39;s real. It was. But the press would ask her about boyfriends. Her male colleagues were asked about science. 7 years later, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell would be excluded from the #Nobel Prize of #Physics.

Replies (15)

@dermotryanie@mastodon.ie 2025-10-04 07:53

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to And her supervisor who kept discouraging her and excluding her *did* get a Nobel Prize for it. The Academy actually mentioned Hewish's decisive role in the discovery of pulsars in its press release.

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@flipper@mastodonapp.uk 2025-10-04 08:28

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to Legend.

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@SnowyCA@social.vivaldi.net 2025-10-04 08:53

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to so little has changed. : (

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@AndrewShields@mas.to 2025-10-04 11:28

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to There’s a wonderful link between Bell’s pulsar work and a poem by Adrienne Rich. https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2021/08/heartbeat-of-pulsar-adrienne-richs-1968.html

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@michael@westergaard.social 2025-10-04 12:59

This is all very bad, but only focusing on her first years without continuing, implicitly suggests that nothing has changed since. Look up her achievements and accolades since the mid 70s and it paints a much less bleak picture. Yes, she was snubbed and had to fight (likely unfairly hard) to achieve recognition, but she does have it now.

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@magsamond@mastodon.ie 2025-10-04 13:28

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to sweet irony then that many many people know her and her achievements; how many can name him?

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@magsamond@mastodon.ie 2025-10-04 13:33

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to and bah humbug, quelle suprise - the Google search AI summary just says "the pulsar was first discovered by a research group at Cambridge University"

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@VisualStuart@pdx.social 2025-10-04 14:09

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to I highly recommend the Lost Women of Science podcast. https://www.lostwomenofscience.org/ Lise Meitner was the key figure in the discovery of nuclear fission, but her colleague, Otto Hahn, received the 1945 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alone, without even an acknowledgement of Meitner by the Nobel committee nor from Hahn publicly or privately. It is a tragic story. https://www.lostwomenofscience.org/podcast-episodes/why-did-lise-meitner-never-receive-the-nobel-prize-for-splitting-the-atom

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@weekend_editor@mathstodon.xyz 2025-10-04 15:10

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to On the other hand, every single physicist knows this. When I was getting my PhD in the late 70s/early 80s, this was part of the folklore: how Hewish didn't believe Bell, then took over when it got good and cut her out. Every single time she came to give a talk, somebody was there to explain the folklore, in a positive way for her. And every time Hewish came around, somebody was there to explain the folklore in a negative way. Sort of like a "whisper network". Yes, it's not enough. It's not even much. It most certainly does not repair the injustice. But every single grad student in my cohort knew Jocelyn Bell and Tony Hewish, and why she was better.

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@svw@fosstodon.org 2025-10-04 21:30

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to When I was studying physics this was the story about the "No Bell" prize. 😕

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@HGourlayUCL@mastodon.education 2025-10-05 07:15

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to And we wonder why it is difficult to increase the number of young women studying physics.

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@cheriecreationstruck@birds.town 2025-10-05 10:59

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to And here we are in 2025 still dealing with misogynistic BS.

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@Huntn00@mastodon.world 2025-10-06 20:01

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to Trump so longs for the good ole days. 😳

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@freeschool@qoto.org 2025-10-13 13:11

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to Try making a copy of this post and adding these hashtags: #Women #History #Irish #IrishHistory #WomenInHistory #WomensHistory #Histodons by #FreeSchool - tips for life!

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@failedLyndonLaRouchite@mas.to 2026-09-09 16:49

@mythologyandhistory@mas.to from the obit for J Gall, a very prominent cell biologist Support for women in science: A lab in which all trainees thrived In addition to his scientific achievements, Joe was renowned for his strong and early support of female scientists. Contrary to what some thought, Joe didn’t favor women. Rather, he treated males and females similarly. This trait made his lab a haven for female trainees. The atypically high proportion of females in his lab intrigued some male scientists. At a 1973 scientific meeting, a prominent scientist asked a group of Gall lab attendees, “What does Joe have that so many 'gals' go to his lab.” One female student replied, “When Joe shuts his office door to discuss your data, he discusses your data.” https://rupress.org/jcb/article/223/12/e202410071/277083/Joseph-G-Gall-1928-2024-Cell-biologist-naturalist

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