We have the honour of welcoming Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell to the Netherlands. On 13 December 2023, she will give a public lecture in Amsterdam at the Science Park.

Recently, ASTRON announced the Bell Burnell Fellowship, named in honour, and with support of, Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell. The Bell Burnell Postdoctoral Fellowship is designed to help scientists build upon emerging strong careers as independent researchers.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell inadvertently discovered pulsars as a graduate student in radio astronomy in Cambridge, opening up a new branch of astrophysics – work recognised by the award of a Nobel Prize to her supervisor.

She has subsequently worked in many roles in many branches of astronomy, working part-time while raising a family. She is now a Visiting Academic in Oxford, and the Chancellor of the University of Dundee, Scotland. She has been President of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society, in 2008 became the first female President of the Institute of Physics for the UK and Ireland, and in 2014 the first female President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was one of the small group of women scientists that set up the Athena SWAN scheme.

She has received many honours, including a $3M Breakthrough Prize in 2018.

The public appreciation and understanding of science have always been important to her, and she is much in demand as a speaker and broadcaster. In her spare time, she gardens, listens to choral music and is active in the Quakers. She has co-edited an anthology of poetry with an astronomical theme – ‘Dark Matter; Poems of Space’.

Location

The public lecture will be held at the Amsterdam Science Park 904 (the building with the telescope domes on top) in room C1.110. You can find directions here.