In the late 1960s Cambridge PhD student Jocelyn Bell Burnell was studying quasars (very luminous active galactic nuclei) when she reported anomalous data which was later identified as pulsars (‘pulsating stars’).

While she was controversially missed off the list for the Nobel Prize awarded in 1974 for this discovery, Bell Burnell continued to be a pioneer in the field.

Now nearing the end of her career, Dame Jocelyn tells Research Features what it was like to grow up in Northern Ireland, be the only woman in a male-dominated environment, and what space research looks like in the era of AI technology.

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