One of the greatest injustices of the 20th Century. Back in 1967 a young Irish scientist named Jocelyn Bell whilst studying at Cambridge was anylising data from metres of pen-graph wave observation printouts produced by a radio telescope array which she had physically built with help from other students over a two year period. She noticed a strange blip the other researchers had ignored. She brought this to the attention of her superiors and was told "just interference from pirate radio stations" She peruaded them to allow her to investigate further and after many sleepless nights and hours spent analysing more printouts and comparing results with another nearby radio telescope, she discovered what we now know as PULSARS her superiors laughed at her at first "Little Green Men" they sniggered refused to allow her to publish. Later after she had discovered 3 more pulsars they realised she was on to something and published a paper in Nature magazine!
In 1974 Antony Hewish & Martin Ryle received the Nobel prize for physics Jocelyn wasn't even mentioned! The pompous wanker Hewitt said in a BBC interview something to the effect of "It's like a ship on a voyage of discovery, any of the crew can shout "Land Ho!" but it's the captain of the ship who discovered it! - I am the captain - Jocelyn was just crew doing her job" How can this sort of bollox be allowed to happen? We must petition the Nobel prize people to put things right!
1 comment:
Yes I saw that documentary and was impressed by how gracious Jocelyn Bell was (wasn't she scottish?). To have claimed to be the captain of the ship when he had specifically told her on several occasions to drop her line of enquiry was particularly extreme chutzpah
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