Irish Examiner view: Jocelyn Bell Burnell awarded Royal Society's Copley Medal

Ms Bell Burnell has become only the second woman to win the Royal Society’s highest prize

Jocelyn Bell Burnell hopes her senior status in science will encourage women to pursue scientific careers. File picture: Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize

Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the Armagh-born astrophysicist who has been awarded the Royal Society’s Copley Medal, has said she hopes her senior status in science will encourage women to pursue scientific careers.

It is an uplifting and important message from a woman who had to battle to be allowed to study science at school, but who has become only the second woman to win the Royal Society’s highest prize. 

Fellow recipients include Nobel-prize-winning chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Albert Einstein, and Charles Darwin.

Bell Burnell’s admission that impostor syndrome made her work so hard that she discovered pulsars at the age of 24 — a discovery that changed our perception of the universe — will also inspire many women, and men, who question themselves during their early career.

In the 1960s, she was overlooked for a Nobel prize in favour of her male supervisor, but, yesterday, she said that was appropriate to the time, because of her student status.

What was more annoying, she said, was how reporters were interested only in her waist, bust, and height and if her hair was blonde or brunette — “no other colours were allowed”, she said.

While Bell Burnell believes things are better now for women, she thinks there is room for improvement. 

At least now, she said, women are watching the gender data. That is key. As the saying goes, ‘if girls can’t see it, they can’t be it’.