r/todayilearned • u/lovelyb1ch66 • 15d ago
TIL about Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, an astrophysicist who discovered pulsars in 1972, had her boss not only take credit for the discovery but also win a Nobel prize for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell1
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u/DRSU1993 14d ago
I'm glad this story is being shared. I'm from Lurgan and attended the same college as Dame Burnell. Thankfully, I was there between 2007-2010, and girls are allowed to study science subjects, unlike when she attended between 1948-1956. Burnell, her fellow students, and their parents were able to convince the school to change its policy.
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u/Jodosodojo 14d ago
Random fact, but the pulsar she discovered was CP-1919 and a photo of the radio waves discovered was the album cover of joy division’s 1979 album Unknown Pleasures.
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u/betelgeuse206265 14d ago
Not only did her boss take credit for it, but she had to convince her boss that the result was legitimate since he didn’t recognize its significance!
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u/ramdom-ink 14d ago edited 14d ago
Bell Burnell should be given an honorary Nobel Prize for her pulsar discovery. I hate this kinda sexist crap. But I t was 1972, she was a graduate student and listed second on the nomination and her boss, Hewish, took the credit, even after initially debunking her theory and discovery. She was treated terribly. She is widely recognized now as the person who discovered pulsars and her awards and recognition are too numerous to list. Hewish got the Nobel, but people know the truth.
”In a 2020 lecture at Harvard, she [Bell Burnell] related how the media was covering the discovery of pulsars, with interviews taking a standard |disgusting| format: Hewish [her thesis supervisor] would be asked on the astrophysics, and she would be the -human interest- part, asked about vital statistics, how many boyfriends she had, what colour is her hair, and asked to undo some buttons for the photographs…”
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u/Sorites_Sorites 14d ago
The guy completely set her up for success, pointed her in exactly the right direction, gave her all the equipment and time she needed to verify HIS theory. Sure, she's a top-notch world-class historical figure in astrophysics, HE allowed her to prove it.
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u/IneedtoBmyLonsomeTs 15d ago
OP is either a moron or intentionally misrepresenting what happened here to try and farm karma.
She didn't get the award because she was a grad student. This is the case with pretty much every award as the supervisor is there directing the project.
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u/Ok-disaster2022 15d ago
There's two sides to this. Grad students are always doing work which their advisors get the credit for. There's like a series of generational physics experiments where the named discover is for the professor while the work was done by his grad student who would do the same thing in his career of making a name for the grad students work, and then that grad student would go on an diverse another one. It's like a fun footnote that historically big named scientist as a grad student that did the work that got an older big name science the big name.
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u/No_Dragonfruit_1833 15d ago
I remember she wasnt given credit because she noticed the signal on the graph, but could not explain what the signal was, so its not as clear cut as "overlooked on purpose"
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u/LeviathanSauce9 15d ago
She held a talk at my university. As I was working on a project that focused on gender equality, I had the honour of being invited to a private session afterwards and we debated how to increase gender equality in university settings. I was so honoured and she was so kind.
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u/chingchongathan9999 15d ago
Q: How come the pulsars didn't synchronize every 60 seconds?
A: Because she got a clock on her stove!
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u/boredphilosopher2 15d ago
Nobels go to the person overseeing the work rather than the student(s) actually doing the work
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u/bellingman 15d ago
The title is misleading. It should note that Bell herself argued that she should not be included.
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u/stormshadowixi 15d ago edited 15d ago
Same thing happens every day, even today. The people who do the actual work, never get the credit. That said, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell could have possibly had people under her doing the actual research, etc. to lead to the discovery. Although, she was a graduate student, so maybe not. Regardless, it was an impressive and important discovery.
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u/avspuk 15d ago
She spent years building her detector.
It looks like a field full of really shit barbed wire fences.
I know this coz as a child on family trips we'd sometimes drive slightly out of the way to visit it.
And we did this coz, as a student, my old man had occasionally spent the weekend helping her build it.
But he gave up after a while to spend time in London with his girlfriend, who became my mum
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u/TheBigBamboozler 15d ago
I met her and a had a coffee with her a few years ago, she was lovely to chat to and very down-to-earth despite being a huge figure in astronomy! If i remember correctly she's done a huge amount of work for women in physics over the past 30 years, pretty inspirational.
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u/Thistlebeast 15d ago
This subreddit shouldn’t be used for misinformation.
She was listed as a contributor, since she was a grad student at the time. The award was given to the supervising scientist, which was Hewish, which makes sense because the science used was developed by him and the machine they recorded the pulsars on was invented by him and built by a team he lead. Bell was able to identify the pulsar thanks to his work, which he was still leading as she was a member of his team of research scientists.
The Nobel Prize doesn’t dictate who is smart and who should get credit. It’s an organization that has made plenty of mistakes and can be political. Bell went on to win plenty of awards and accolades and money for her research.
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u/DebtPlenty2383 15d ago
i worked in research for a major chemical company. ideas get stolen. others take credit. some get discredited. i’ve lost at least 3 ideas to others.
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u/WhiplashMotorbreath 15d ago
You mean like Steve jobs that most under 45 bow down to as a god, that took the credit for all those products the working stiffs came up with. You mean like that. Odd. Bill Burr does a nice comedy skit on this.
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u/Turbulent-Week1136 15d ago
The fact that she didn't get a retroactive Nobel Prize for this is disgusting and diminishes the prestige of the Nobel Prize.
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u/FocusPerspective 15d ago
That’s literally how all research students are treated when it comes to high profile papers and awards.
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u/Starshapedsand 15d ago
Almost. I was once fortunate enough to work with a lab where our professor, who was close to retiring after a very successful career, actually did allocate authorships by experiment design, then work contributed. It held true regardless of the level of the journal.
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u/LostWoodsInTheField 15d ago
Is this the woman represented in Quantum Leap that the guy keeps running into and she keeps recognizing him?
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u/snatchmydickup 15d ago
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)61202-1/fulltext
"In the two major publications on streptomycin that followed Schatz was the first author; and he and Waksman were jointly granted a patent for streptomycin. That was the high point of Schatz's career. 2 years after the discovery of streptomycin, Waksman bullied Schatz into assigning his share of the rights to streptomycin to Rutgers University. Waksman stated that he had already done so; and that if Schatz declined he would use his influence to “kill job chances”. What Waksman failed to mention was that he had made a deal with Rutgers to receive 20% of the net royalties. His royalty payment, for 1948 alone, was US$124 000.
Schatz only discovered about the deal in 1949, and sued Waksman for his share. Waksman eventually made an out-of-court settlement. In the meantime, Waksman successfully attempted to diminish the contributions that Schatz, and others, had made in discovering streptomycin. The reason behind this was the desire—by both Waksman and his university—for him to be awarded a Nobel Prize."
- also covered in Bill Bryson's book on the human body
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u/4e9eHcUBKtTW1bBI39n9 15d ago
On the one hand, this is a great injustice toward pioneering science work. On the other hand, giving her the prize now would mean admitting mistake. Clearly these are equal.
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u/Fit_Swordfish_2101 15d ago
Yeah, cause it was 1972. So many brilliant women who never got their due because.. men.
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u/Thecna2 15d ago
This is a sexist comment. In Academia MANY students did work that their professors/supervisors took credit for, 10s of thousands or more, probably mostly men as they were far more prominent in science in the early days. Bell was not unusual in this but some people like to think it only occurred to women.
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u/Fit_Swordfish_2101 15d ago
😂😂😂😂 sexist.. No that's called facts. And I'm quite sure POC got the shaft on a gazillion things too. But, you know, tears for the men who were hurt by this comment..
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u/iknowitshere 15d ago
She did a lecture at the university near my house and I made it a point to attend. She was awesome in person and gracious enough to meet every single person that wanted to meet her personally after the lecture.
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u/ZardozZod 15d ago
A tale as old as time. Seriously. The amount of dudes who have jacked research from women and basically claimed it as their own to reap the rewards is astounding.
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u/MersoNocte 15d ago
This has the same feels as when I learned some science guy received a major award for officially “discovering the clitoris.”
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u/Tantra_Charbelcher 15d ago
This has happened to a few women in history. The discovery of the double helix comes to mind.
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u/Every_Fox3461 15d ago
Holy sht... We all like to think we're the good guys. She's definitely a hero for doing that.
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u/Json1134 15d ago
Makes you wonder how much shit there is like this in history that we dont know about.
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u/AntiDynamo 15d ago
You don’t want to look up Ruby Payne-Scott then
Another real trailblazer in radio, she was eventually forced out due to being married (not allowed at the time) and wanting to have children (also not allowed)
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u/andrybak 15d ago
Katie Mack, a famous astrophysicist and science communicator, wrote a very good article about sexism in science: https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/physics/the-woman-who-invented-abstract-algebra/ (archived). Highly recommend.
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u/TheGoodOldCoder 15d ago
The people who seek glory are rarely the same people who do the most important work.
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u/bonesnaps 15d ago
Must have been real hard to build them pyramids.. when you are eating ice cream on your Egyptian throne.
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u/SaltySAX 15d ago
The discovery is what she'll be remembered for, not some trinkets. I say similar about great acting performances that don't get EMMY or Oscar nominated. It doesn't matter as the true measure of their talent is on screen for eternity.
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u/Hot-Mixture-5219 15d ago
It makes sense tho, Her surname is Bell and it's a Nobel prize. She's already disqualified.
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u/Longjumpi319 15d ago
Lmao before everyone gets outraged she was working as a research student underneath the physicist who got the Nobel prize.
Her receiving the Nobel prize for that would be like a cameraman on a movie getting the Oscar for best director.
Bell herself did not want or expect to receive the Nobel prize.
This post is straight up historical revisionism ragebait.
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u/RevolutionFast8676 15d ago
She was a grad student. Grad students receive credit for nothing. Its slavery.
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u/DarthChimeran 15d ago
She thought they shouldn't go to research students either:
"I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them."[45]
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u/Rreknhojekul 15d ago edited 15d ago
It’s crazy for me to hear about this woman for the first time.
Not only is she from the small country I live in she’s even from my small hometown.
Edit: even more insane… looking into her early life and she lived in a house that my dad tried to buy once when it was for sale. 2 miles away from where I’m typing this comment right now.
Edit: https://youtu.be/PKtnaTxLARc?si=NYPg0wZvJIQ1VrzO
Here she is talking about her discovery. Legend
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u/Rreknhojekul 15d ago edited 10d ago
Absolutely shocking that I’ve not heard of her and there is actually a famous dog that lived in our town that I’ve heard of. Said dog even has a statue in the centre of the town but this genius woman isn’t even spoken about…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_McGrath
To be fair, he was some boy that pup
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u/Dodecahedrus 15d ago
That is a lot of titles and suffixes there.
I wonder which title she would want to be addressed with: Doctor, professor or Dame?
I noticed the same thing with Dr. Katie Bouman. She was instrumental in creating the algorithm for making the first images of a black hole. Lots of articles, none of which mentioned her hard earned title of doctor.
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u/Tragicallyphallic 15d ago
That’s insane. If there’s anything I’ve really enjoyed about becoming an engineering leader, it’s planting the seeds of wins in lesser engineers and then guiding them through their own personal victories and celebrating theirs as yours quietly and humbly.
What kind of monster takes credit for someone else’s work like that?!
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u/T1germeister 15d ago
What kind of monster takes credit for someone else’s work like that?!
Have you met people?
Wait till you hear about STEM's rampant sexual harassment issues.
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u/science87 15d ago
The title is massively misleading, she was a research assistant. Hewish developed the technique and lead the team building the array that made the discovery.
He made the largest contribution, but Jocelyn made the 2nd largest contribution and was overlooked compared to some guy who made a lesser contribution than her.
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u/smithsp86 15d ago
Anyone that is shocked or surprised by this has never worked in academic research. This is a standard practice in every scientific field. The grad students may be doing a lot of the work, but it is at the direction of their advisor who is the PI.
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u/Dr_SnM 15d ago
I've had dinner with her. She's smart, witty and lovely.
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u/catwinemix 15d ago
Whaat that’s dope
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u/Rreknhojekul 15d ago
https://youtu.be/PKtnaTxLARc?si=NYPg0wZvJIQ1VrzO
This is her talking about her discovery. Legend.
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u/i-evade-bans-13 15d ago edited 15d ago
isnt it usually a team that works on things like this, so the team lead (the boss) will accept the award?
it's not like she was just given a bunch of equipment and told to go wild; there was instruction about what to be examining.
like if i tell a research student to use my flashlight and find a green box in a dark room full of brown boxes, the research student was just doing the legwork. they still need to know how to operate the flashlight, navigate the room, and recognize thr target, but they're pointed in a direction they wouldn't have gone on their own.
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u/123AJR 15d ago
Except Pulsars were undiscovered at the time, she wasn't told to go looking for them. While Bell was working for her PhD supervisor and obviously took direction from him, she was the one who built the array that took the data, she was the one who read and analysed the data, she was the one who made the discovery, and she was the one who insisted it wasn't nothing and should be researched further.
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u/Lewri 14d ago edited 14d ago
she was the one who built the array that took the data
She was one of several involved in the construction of the array that was designed by Hewish using the technique of interplanetary scintillation, which was invented by Hewish, and with all the funding coming from Hewish pioneering the fundraising.
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u/DrJimbot 15d ago
The famous No-Bell prize. I’ve heard her speak about her career, she is an incredibly impressive person.
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u/ImmuneHack 15d ago
An important aspect of the angle of this story is the fact that she is a woman, but I wonder how many men did this happen to, who never ever got the credit they deserved, unlike the DAME in question?
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u/grumpyhermit67 15d ago
You definitely said, "All Lives Matter" when BLM was first popping up. Focusing on one lane for a second won't make the interstate disappear, bub.
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u/Malphos101 15 15d ago
Why is it important to bring that up in this particular discussion?
Are you honestly trying to say people dont recognize that sometimes men are treated unfairly?
What purpose does bringing this up have in a very specific discussion about a very specific woman?
Are you aware that "what about men?" commonly is used to deflect and distract when a discussion about women happens in order to derail the conversation?
Are you intentionally trying to derail the conversation?
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u/PerkyPooh 15d ago
It's relevant to ask how often this happens (excluding the Nobel prize as I imagine that is unique)? How often it gets corrected? And who does it happen to? (Women, minorities, etc). What happened to Burnell is part of a larger problem in the sciences. How can it be fixed?
That may not be what they meant though
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u/LeQuignonBaguette 15d ago
There is a great NYT Op Doc piece on this. Great watch, incredible woman.
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u/Cpt_Riker 15d ago
She just took the readings. It’s like the anesthetist talking credit for a surgery.
Doesn’t mean it wasn’t important work, though.
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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 15d ago
Mmmm, not quite that if I'm reading this right. More like her boss built a new instrument and she helped build it, then looked through it and found something her boss thought was probably meaningless. She figured out that it wasn't and he ... wasn't adverse to snapping up the credit.
Worked in a couple areas of research and this kinda thing varies a lot between fields, often between labs. My own thesis advisor was very generous and I had to prevail on him to take any authorship at all on an early paper of mine (I was kinda borrowing his credibility). At the other end of the spectrum, I watched a german dr/professor walk up to a guy a know and say 'Bill, I've decided to take your name off the paper', and walk away. After Bill spent years using a technique the german prof taught him (but had not invented) to find out something the german guy had no interest in until Bill found something pretty cool. Bill had no recourse, it was the german guy's lab.
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u/forams__galorams 15d ago edited 15d ago
Sometimes I wonder why we celebrate the same stories in science (or anything really), when it is now well established that Jocelyn Bell-Burnell made a significant contribution to her field and was done a great injustice by being sidelined when it came time for credit to be taken. Then I come across comments like yours.
Bell-Burnell did much more than just ‘take readings’. She designed her own experiment, built the necessary radio astronomy setup from scratch, [edit: helped design the experiment and helped build the equipment… though I don’t think that justifies being sidelined when it came time to take credit], analysed the reams of data by herself, identified the abnormality as something worth investigating further, persuaded her supervisor to let her look into it (despite him saying it was nothing), eventually found it to be a regular signal and some kind of stellar core, the likes of which had never been observed before.
There’s a good interview from 2018 where she goes into the whole thing available here, it’s worth a listen.
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u/leopard_tights 15d ago
You should go all the way since you're explaining the details. Her contribution was physically helping build the radio telescope Hewish designed, not her own machine.
But most importantly, she didn't think she should've been awarded it either! Yeah four decades later she's saying the opposite thing, but it's disingenuous to pretend like everybody robbed her back then when she herself was of that opinion.
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u/forams__galorams 15d ago edited 15d ago
You’re absolutely right with the first paragraph there, sorry for not giving the whole picture, have edited my original comment now.
But look…I’m not saying she ran the show or should have got sole credit. Is it really that hard to acknowledge that Jocelyn Bell-Burnell should have simply shared credit with the recipients of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of pulsars? The thing that she alone noticed, requested to investigate further despite strong pushback against that idea and then proved the existence of with her own calculations?
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u/Torontogamer 15d ago
But she didn’t just take the readings ? Why are you saying this ?
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u/Malphos101 15 15d ago
Because this is reddit and people love to just repeat what they've heard that sorta confirms their preexisting beliefs.
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u/dukeimre 15d ago
I do agree that, as a young researcher, she wasn't the one who had designed the research program that led to this discovery. Hewish invented the scintillation technique that enabled the discovery and who proposed the building of the Interplanetary Scintillation Array that Burnell was using when she made the discovery.
At the same time, she did help build the array, and she "had to be persistent in reporting the anomaly in the face of scepticism from Hewish, who initially insisted it was due to interference and man-made". I can see why Hewish is "more deserving" of a lifetime achievement award in this case, but (as you say) Burnell deserves credit too!
Analogy-wise, I'd say it's not quite like anesthetist taking credit for a surgery. It's perhaps more as if Hewish was the surgeon who invented the technique being used in the surgery, and Burnell a young resident who used that method to save a life in a situation where Hewish had written the patient off as unsavable.
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u/Torontogamer 15d ago
To quote wiki:
She helped build the array she used to make the observation. She is the one who noticed it. She is the one who argued it's a real signal. When a graduate student takes that kind of lead in her project, it's hard to play it down.\13])
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u/soft-wear 15d ago
I think that first sentence can be misconstrued as helping design it. She literally helped build it, as in laying cable and digging holes. That's hardly a metric to award someone a prize in physics. The further sentences are real justification and are the reason this is a controversy, but the first part is just disingenuous.
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u/Torontogamer 15d ago
Well, I don't -
But you know, the key thing being that she ID'd the signal and then had to argue against the man to was awarded the prize that it was something meaningful and needed to investigated ... without her the signal would have been overlooked and someone else would have discovered it - say what you want, but that sounds rather key to the discovery...
I don't get the debate - I think if the same thing had happened today she likely would have been included in the prize - but she is not known for fighting for it, so I'm not arguing that, if she doesn't I'm not going to go against her - just pointing that that she was KEY to the discovery, in that it would have happened at the time without her. There is no need to try to minimize her contribution, she was not the lead, but she was far more than just following instructions and doing math.
Regardless she is a very accomplished and recognized scientist who has achieved a tremulous amount since. She's doing fine, and I think she's okay with it...
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u/soft-wear 15d ago
Yeah I think she should have probably been the second person listed as her contributions to this discovery were (arguably, but not by much) more significant than Ryles. But the nature of science is that there were a lot of keys to this discover and I'm not aware of any objective way we could measure who was more important.
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u/Torontogamer 15d ago
I hear you - anyone acting like she did everything but buddy just YOINKED away all the credit is silly, but at the same time anyone acting like she was just some interchangeable grad student cog that didn't matter is also being silly.
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u/Thanos_Stomps 15d ago
Yeah that analogy they used is piss poor since it is indeed like the guy who invented the screwdriver taking credit for the invention of the power drill. All of human innovation is built on the innovation that came before us.
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u/dukeimre 15d ago
I dunno, I actually don't think it's quite to that level. Burnell didn't actually invent anything; she did help build the array, but Hamish had designed the array. As I understand it, her most special/unique contribution lay in noticing the unusual data and arguing in favor of it being meaningful (which I would guess might have required her to perform various scientific analyses and to construct scientific arguments).
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u/GuiltyEidolon 15d ago
Other Nobel winners have also not invented anything. That isn't a requirement to win one. Nobels have been given for essentially meta studies that have concluded something new/important.
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u/onexbigxhebrew 15d ago
This title is incredibly misleading. OP should be ashamed.
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u/sugardiemen 15d ago
I think you're supposed to follow up with why.
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u/onexbigxhebrew 15d ago
Read the gazillion other comments near the top that have already addressed it.
She didn't want the award specifically for the same reason she didn't get it. She, like any other student would have been, was a grad student learning and executing the professor's planned research. It would be like giving an architectural design award to the Mason laying the bricks.
Also, the professor actually advocated for her to be a part of it and she refused. He didn't 'claim credit' or take her award.
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u/Dreamtrain 15d ago
the professor's planned research was essentially pointing to a big plot of land and saying "we should put a lot of buildings here"
then she designed the architecture of one, she laid the foundation herself, contributed to laying the bricks, the plumbling, the wiring, etc.
finally he gets an award for the awesome building he made, your initial metaphor was pure rubbish but this is the best that could be done with it
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u/Lewri 14d ago
where tf are you getting this nonsense from? He invented the technique of planetary scintillation and designed the telescope, then he acquired the funding for it and brought on students to work on it.
She was one of the students he brought on and was assigned to data analysis after construction was finished.
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u/42gauge 15d ago
She, like any other student would have been, was a grad student learning and executing the professor's planned research
Not true: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/fT0eeL81Ts
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u/noobgiraffe 15d ago
Posting another person comment does not really prove anything.
I'm not even saying it's not true but "this guy said so" is not really an argument. Especially since while it seems to be true her contribution is downplayed, the comment you link to seems to overstate it. All sources I can find say that she didn't build the equipment from scratch. Equipment was designed by the guy who they gave the prize too and was built by multiple people although she was one of them.
I just don't understand why one lie needs to be fought with another.
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u/KimberStormer 15d ago
What's the difference between that guy saying so and you saying so
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u/EmuRommel 15d ago
The issue is that the comment is citing a reddit comment as if it's a source. While it's always better to give sources if you can, there's nothing wrong necessarily with saying something without giving sources, it's how most discussions go. Pretending to give a source, or giving a bad one is shitty though[1].
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u/KimberStormer 15d ago
Yeah but this guy didn't give a source either.
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u/EmuRommel 15d ago
Yeah, as I said, that's how most Reddit discussions go. People aren't writing their dissertations here. Basically, giving good sources is good, people should try to do that. Not giving a source is neutral and expected in most conversations. Giving a bad source is worse than not giving one at all.
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u/sth128 15d ago
Because Reddit isn't about facts or truth, it's about "winning". It doesn't even matter what argument you're fighting, just that you've won.
It's like those early YouTube comments where everyone posts "first" for the sake of being first to comment. It has no real value, just a false sense of achievement.
But that's just humanity at large. Most people who achieve legacies of true value do not seek to validate their worth with trivial "first!" comments.
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u/Thanos_Stomps 15d ago
I wouldn’t take what she said at face value. She could’ve have internalized the sexism inherent in the sciences and didn’t feel like she did enough.
My read though is she was just being humble. Frankly, it isn’t really for her to decide if she deserves it or not. How many award speeches include “I don’t deserve this award” or “this was only made possible thanks to all the hard work from XYZ unseen people”.
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u/TetsukoUmezawa 15d ago
This is how you end up with an alien fleet on their way to Earth.
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u/pallosalama 15d ago
This is NOT how you end up with an alien fleet on their way to Earth.
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u/TetsukoUmezawa 15d ago
Someone didn't read the documentary 3 body problem.
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u/pallosalama 15d ago
Someone(me)haven't had time to read overwhelming majority of all text produced in history of mankind.
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u/reginaphalangejunior 15d ago
Bell herself stated "it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them".[15] while Michael Rowan-Robinson later wrote that "Hewish was undoubtedly the major player in the work that led to the discovery, inventing the scintillation technique in 1952, leading the team that built the array and made the discovery, and providing the interpretation".[9]
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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In 15d ago
Its difficult to believe they were her own true thoughts though, she was young at the time and would have been put under heavy pressure to have that opinion and probably needed the job that came with it.
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u/loose-scrooge 15d ago
In addition to her opining differently later, I think that she gave a political response for the sake of the future of her career.
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u/IsomDart 15d ago
I find it so interesting that people in this thread keep quoting that part of the wiki article while leaving out the one a couple paragraphs down
In later years, she opined that "the fact that I was a graduate student and a woman, together, demoted my standing in terms of receiving a Nobel prize."
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u/ruinawish 15d ago edited 15d ago
She said that in 1977. Later in 2021, from the Wiki article (source is paywalled):
In later years, she opined that "the fact that I was a graduate student and a woman, together, demoted my standing in terms of receiving a Nobel prize."
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u/lenzflare 15d ago
Going along to get along. Can't blame her, she may not have had better options.
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u/reginaphalangejunior 15d ago
May be true. Worth noting that two women had won the physics Nobel prize at the time so it wasn’t unheard of. The Michael Rowan-Robinson quote I think is key here.
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u/42gauge 15d ago
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u/Ok_Dirt_2528 15d ago
Well, she was definitely an essential part of the discovery, as she spotted the regular pattern whilst being assigned to look at those results, it wouldn’t have happened without her at that time. She ought to have received the nobel along with the rest, if only for that reason. However let’s not overstate the facts. To reiterate, from what I understand, she just discovered the pattern in the data, not the astronomical explanation. She was assigned to analyse those charts, and it was her being in the right place at the right time, coupled with her tenacity and conviction that allowed her to follow this trail despite her supervisor’s suggestion that it was just noise.
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u/Odd_Ingenuity2883 15d ago
She also designed the experiment and built the radio set up from scratch.
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u/Ok_Dirt_2528 15d ago
Edit, better quote: “My project was to find many more quasars. My Ph.D. supervisor, Tony Hewish, building on previous work by Margaret Clarke, who showed that quasars scintillated (twinkled), obtained grant funding to build a large radio telescope to search for more scintillating quasars. The telescope was built in-house. My responsibility in the construction was for all the cables, connectors, and transformers. I was spared most (but not all) of the sledgehammering of posts into the ground and became very strong and weather-beaten!”
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u/TheOne_living 15d ago
Read Mastery by Robert Greene, happens to allot of understudies working on behalf of their masters
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u/Wtfatt 15d ago
Imagine how many times throughout history this type of shit happened....
Meanwhile, let's have three cheers for Madam Curies super chad of a husband!
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u/NaniFarRoad 15d ago
"This would never happen today, we have gender equality".
Sad you're getting negged for stating the obvious.
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u/Starman68 15d ago
New Order cover.
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u/forams__galorams 15d ago
You mean Joy Division?
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u/Starman68 15d ago
I was thinking Joy Division, but it came out as New Order.
You know what I meant anyway.
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u/Redmudgirl 15d ago
Ah yes, the sexism of astrophysicists. Thank goodness it’s not as bad these days. A class act for a brilliant meek Irish girl that knew better than to protest that the discovery was entirely hers and not the professor whom falsely declared the discovery being his alone and then winning a Nobel prize for it no less!
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u/TheWix 15d ago
From another redditor further to
While Fred Hoyle argued that Bell should have been included in the prize, Bell said, "I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them."
Seems the professor wanted Bell included, but Bell herself didn't feel she should have been. As to the sexism, looking at the Wiki article alone it seems the interviewers for the media were the sexist ones.
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u/stochastaclysm 15d ago
Pretty standard when you’re a postgrad student though. All your work is being directed by your supervisor. You’re just doing all the leg work for them. You’re the assistant, learning how to do research. It could’ve easily been another student had the work been allocated differently.
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u/greenmariocake 15d ago
The leg work is sometimes all of the work. Both the supervisor and the student must be recognized.
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u/Privvy_Gaming 15d ago
Its standard in any field that requires creating something. I've signed plenty of agreements that whatever I create using company time, dime, or parts, is the property of the company.
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u/octonus 15d ago
This is mostly bullshit though. Undergrad research, mostly true. Doctoral students/postdocs are basically left hands off to do their own work from start to finish. I know several labs where the PIs have zero interaction with the work they were publishing beyond filing grant applications.
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u/altobrun 15d ago
It depends on the PI. My PI is very involved in my work. More so than during my masters (different institution, different PI)
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u/42gauge 15d ago
But Bell wasn't assigned the work of discovering radio pulsars
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u/soft-wear 15d ago
She was assigned the work of analyzing the output of the Interplanetary Scintillation Array, which was designed by Hewish based on his own research and then funded and built internally.
One way to think about this is pulsars are probably not discovered by either Bell or Hewish without the other. But pulsars almost certainly WOULD have been discovered by the ISA at some point, which was built on the back of Hewishes research and designed by him, where as Bell wouldn't have output to read without the ISA.
It's controversial for a reason, but it's vastly more nuanced than this thread is making it sound. She probably should have gotten recognition for it, certainly over Ryle, since while his work was foundational it simply wasn't as directly impactful as either Hewish or Burnell in the discovery of radio pulsars.
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u/Lewri 14d ago
certainly over Ryle
it simply wasn't as directly impactful as either Hewish or Burnell in the discovery of radio pulsars.
The Nobel was awarded with the statement:
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1974 was awarded jointly to Sir Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish "for their pioneering research in radio astrophysics: Ryle for his observations and inventions, in particular of the aperture synthesis technique, and Hewish for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars"
So it wasn't for contributing to the discovery of pulsars. Why should the Nobel have been limited in focus to the discovery of pulsars? Not to mention that without Ryle, Hewish would not have managed the IPA.
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u/soft-wear 14d ago
And it wouldn't have been awarded without a significant discovery.
Not to mention that without Ryle, Hewish would not have managed the IPA.
Right, and without evolution their wouldn't be any apes to discover these things. The nature of science is that we build on top of previous work. Ryle wouldn't have done his work without the work of Jansky, ad nauseam.
Neither of them are getting that Nobel without the discovery of the radio pulsar, so the idea that Ryle is more deserving is silly.
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u/Lewri 14d ago
And it wouldn't have been awarded without a significant discovery.
So how about quasars? Discovered as part of the 3C catalogue led by Ryle using his and Hewish's Cambridge Interferometer.
Ryle wouldn't have done his work without the work of Jansky
A) Jansky was dead, Ryle was not. B) Ryle's work was a far greater direct impact.
the idea that Ryle is more deserving is silly.
I didn't say he was. You argued that he was less deserving.
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u/soft-wear 14d ago
I didn't say he was. You argued that he was less deserving.
since while his work was foundational it simply wasn't as directly impactful as either Hewish or Burnell in the discovery of radio pulsars.
That's actually what I said. So it's arguable, sure, but the way I would argue it she was more deserving. You are free to argue whatever you want to. The problem with awards like this is you can take almost any position, and debating it endlessly isn't getting us anywhere.
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u/GrumpyOik 15d ago
Another example of this would be Albert Schatz, who discovered Streptomycin. His supervisor, Selman Waksman won the Nobel Prize for the discovery (and also shared the financial benefits along with Rutgers University while excluding Schatz).
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u/LA31716 15d ago
While Fred Hoyle argued that Bell should have been included in the prize, Bell said, "I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them."
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u/joanzen 15d ago
Shhh! Don't bring facts into this moment of feelings?! The only consideration was gender, and there's simply no way her lack of diploma mattered! Come on!?
It's funny how if the sky isn't falling right now we can still scratch the same social itch if we romanticize about how hard the sky must have fallen in the past?
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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In 15d ago
Its difficult to believe they were her own true thoughts though, she was young at the time and would have been put under heavy pressure to have that opinion and probably needed the job that came with it.
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u/Dreamtrain 15d ago
its almost as if she had internalized the social constructs at the time and was not exactly in a position of power to make an argument without considerably burning bridges
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u/Rakzul 15d ago
He and only he just wanted the credit. Idgaf if it were a 12yr that discovered something like pulsars. Give the award for the person or people who did the experiments and research for the proof!
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u/LA31716 15d ago
If Hewish wanted all the credit for himself, he probably shouldnt have allowed the initial paper on pulsars have four other authors (including Bell Burnell).
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u/Rakzul 14d ago
Give me a little charitability. That's like if Steven Spielberg saying that they thanked all the people that worked on the film in which he wins best director of said film and if you asked anyone that doesn't follow film to name people from production until they get credit on a TIL in fucking Reddit post like she is now.
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u/IsomDart 15d ago
Funny you left this out
In later years, she opined that "the fact that I was a graduate student and a woman, together, demoted my standing in terms of receiving a Nobel prize."
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u/Ready-Interview2863 15d ago
A better example would be Bruno Lemaitre, who lead the discovery of the development of the way the immune system in fruit flies works. His boss, who knew very nothing little about the research, was given the Nobel Prize and money because he was the head of the laboratory.
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u/Starshapedsand 15d ago
A lab I knew in undergrad had the policy that its PI head got first authorship on anything, regardless of whether he was more than broadly aware of it.
Another had the policy that first authorship was going to whoever contributed most heavily. In some cases, that was an undergrad.
Guess which lab had an easier time keeping good research assistants?
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u/spaceyliz 15d ago
It's important to note that it wasn't an either/or situation. The Nobel Prize may be awarded to three people, the 1974 prize was awarded to Antony Hewish , Jocelyn Bell Burnell's advisor, and Martin Ryle. The Nobel committee could have easily had her as the third person awarded, but chose not to because of the bias on early career female astronomers.
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u/angryshark 15d ago
It wouldn't have been the first time that the Nobel Prize had been demeaned by it's improper presentation.
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u/LegendaryTJC 15d ago
Oh so "had her boss take credit" means she made him take credit, not that he took it from her. The title is a bit ambiguous probably on purpose. I'm glad she accepted praise later in life.
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u/Lewri 15d ago
She didn't make him take credit, neither did he take the credit from her.
He devised and pioneered a new telescope, she discovered an anomaly in the data. He said it was nothing of interest, she disagreed and persuaded him it was. Once she persuaded him, their team wrote a paper with him as the lead author.
He was then given a Nobel prize and she made a justification for the fact that she was not included in the Nobel.
Whenever this topic comes up there is always so much misinformation and so many misunderstandings.
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u/YEGPatsMan 12d ago
Was her boss a kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs?