Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Dean of Science
University of Bath
Bath, England

Talk Title: Pulsars and Extreme Physics

Abstract
Pulsars were discovered 35 years ago. What do we know about them now, and what have they taught us about the extremes of physics? With an average density comparable to that of the nucleus, magnetic fields around 108 T and speeds close to c these objects have stretched our understanding of the behaviour of matter. They serve as extremely accurate clocks with which to carry out precision experiments in relativity. Created in cataclysmic explosions, pulsars are a (stellar) form of life after death. After half a billion revolutions most pulsars finally die, but amazingly some are born again to yet another, even weirder, afterlife. Pulsar research continues lively, delivering exciting, startling and almost unbelievable results!

Biographical Sketch
Dean of Science at the University of Bath since 2001, I have spent the previous ten years as Professor of Physics at the Open University, and had a year as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Princeton University, USA.

I started my academic career by failing the Northern Ireland equivalent of the 11+. After gaining a creditable number of O and A levels I went on to read a Physics degree at Glasgow University, Scotland. This was followed by a PhD in Cambridge (UK) in Radio Astronomy. During my time there I was involved in the discovery of pulsars, opening up a new branch of astrophysics work which was recognised by the award of a Nobel Prize to my supervisor.

Marriage to a peripatetic husband meant I worked subsequently at the University of Southampton (in gamma ray astronomy) and at University College London (in X-ray astronomy) before returning to Scotland in the early 80's to a job in infrared astronomy at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. Latterly I held a management job there, running the James Clerk Maxwell telescope in Hawaii as a facility for astronomers in British, Canadian and Dutch universities. For most of this period I worked part-time while raising a family. I have chaired, served on, or serviced more Research Council Boards, Committees and Panels than I wish to remember, and have also chaired a European Community Committee. On completion of a term as Vice-president of the Royal Astronomical Society I was elected to the Council of the Open University.

I have used telescopes flown on high-altitude balloons, launched on rockets and carried on satellites, and built a radio telescope which was firmly grounded in Cambridgeshire. Later in my career I could be found in Hawaii panting for breath at 14000' and using the UK's infrared or millimetre waveband telescopes.

The Oppenheimer prize, the Michelson medal, the Tinsley prize and the Magellanic Premium have been awarded to me by learned bodies in the US and the UK's Royal Astronomical Society has presented me with the Herschel Medal. UK and US universities have conferred honorary doctorates on me, and I hold an Honorary Fellowship in New Hall, her former Cambridge College.

I was made a CBE in 1999 and that year also won the Edinburgh Medal for services to science and society. The Royal Society elected me a Fellow in 2003.

The public appreciation and understanding of science have always been important to me, and I am much in demand as a speaker and broadcaster. In 1995 I was awarded the Jansky Lectureship in the USA and in 1999 toured Australia giving the Women in Physics Lecture. I helped plan the Edinburgh International Science Festival for a number of years, and am delighted by its success.

My appointment to the Open University doubled the number of female professors of physics in the UK. I hope that my presence as a senior woman in science will encourage more women to consider a career in science.

In my spare time I walk, garden, sew, swim and knit, listen to choral music and am active in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).