Jocelyn Bell Burnell: a star among the stars
We are so happy to be joined by Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, legendary astrophysicist who made the first observations of pulsars during her PhD at the Cavendish, and went on to become a fierce advocate of diversity in science. Dame Jocelyn is visiting Cambridge to give a special talk organised by the Cambridge University Women in Physics Society for International Women’s Day and we’re really excited to be able to spend time with her and ask her about her journey.
--
A brief note for our listeners: this episode includes personal reflections on life in academia and physics in past decades, and it may refer to attitudes, behaviours, and workplace cultures that many will find outdated, uncomfortable, or shocking. These accounts are shared to document lived experience and help us understand how the culture has changed; they do not represent current values and operations.
Useful Links:
- Learn more about the Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund | Institute of Physics
- Journeys of discovery: Jocelyn Bell Burnell and pulsars - This article published on the University of Camrbidge website includes the photo of Jocelyn mentioned in our conversation.
- To explore Charlotte's student society's activities, visit Cambridge University Women in Physics Society | CUWPS
Share and join the conversation
- Help us get better by taking our quick survey. Your feedback will help us understand how we can improve in the future. Thank you!
- If you like this episode don’t forget to rate it and leave a review on your favourite podcast app. It really helps others to find us.
- Any comment about the podcast or question you would like to ask our physicists, email us at podcast@phy.cam.ac.uk or join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #PeopleDoingPhysics.
Episode credits
Hosts: Charlotte Lane and Vanessa Bismuth
Recording and editing: Chris Brock
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcript
I think the more people you can get who think in slightly different ways, the better.
Speaker A:An awful lot of physicists think along the same lines, but if you increase diversity, you will maybe increase the diversity of thinking, and that has to be good for the subject.
Speaker B:Welcome to People Doing Physics, the podcast that explores the personal side of physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.
Speaker B:Hi, I'm Vanessa Bismuth, the communications Manager at the Cavendish.
Speaker C:Hello, I'm Charlotte Lane, a PhD student in quantum optics.
Speaker B:Before we begin, a brief note for our listeners.
Speaker B:This episode includes personal reflections on life in academia and physics in past decades and it may refer to attitudes, behaviours and workplace cultures that many will find outdated, uncomfortable or shocking.
Speaker B:These accounts are shared to document lived experience and help us understand how the culture has changed.
Speaker B:They do not represent current values and operations.
Speaker B:Let's jump in.
Speaker B:Today we're so happy to be joined by Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Bunnell, legendary astrophysicist who made the first observations of pulsars during her PhD at the Cavendish and went on to become a fierce advocate of diversity in science.
Speaker B:Dame Jocelyn is visiting Cambridge to give a special talk organized by the Cambridge University Women in Physics Society for International Women's Day, and we're really excited to be able to spend time with her and ask her about her journey.
Speaker B:We're also very happy to have Charlotte Lane here with us too.
Speaker B:Charlotte is the Chair of the Women in Physics Society and instigator of this event to co host this episode.
Speaker B:Welcome, Charlotte.
Speaker C:Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker B:Dame Jocelyn, welcome.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for giving us a bit of your time before getting on stage.
Speaker B:We are really delighted and excited to have you with us today.
Speaker A:Thank you very much.
Speaker A:Good to be here.
Speaker B:So, in this podcast, we like to.
Speaker D:Start at the very beginning.
Speaker D:So can you tell us what first sparked your curiosity about science and about the sky in particular?
Speaker A:It must go back a very long way, because I can remember my concerning at age 11 or 12 when we moved into secondary school.
Speaker A:Exciting, going to secondary school, lots of new subjects and all that kind of thing.
Speaker A:And on the Wednesday of the first week of secondary school, a message went round the first year class this afternoon.
Speaker A:Girls to such and such a room and boys to somewhere else.
Speaker A:And I thought, this is sport, that's why they're separating us.
Speaker A:It wasn't.
Speaker A:They sent the boys to the science lab and the girls to the cookery room.
Speaker A:No discussion, no choice.
Speaker A:And when I realized what was happening, I protested to the domestic science teacher that I wanted to do science and she said no.
Speaker A:When I told my parents that evening, they hit the roof and they phoned up the local doctor who had a daughter in the same class who phoned up his brother and sister in law who had also a daughter in the same class.
Speaker A:And three sets of parents lobbied the school and three girls were allowed to do science.
Speaker A:First girls ever in that school.
Speaker A:We did physics that first term and I came top of the class, which was probably politically the most important exam result I've ever had.
Speaker D:And that was actually one of my questions is like growing up, did you.
Speaker B:Have any adults around you who understood.
Speaker D:Your interest and encouraged you or did you have to create your own path?
Speaker D:But it sounds like you had the support.
Speaker A:Yes, my father was an architect and he often used me as his surveying assistant.
Speaker A:You know, when they go out to measure the land where they're going to build a house and get the gradients and all that.
Speaker A:And I was allowed to reduce the observations as we came home in the car afterwards.
Speaker D:So you always had this scientific mind, this curiosity and this interest and then you thought so to be able to study it at school, but that as long as you can remember you had that?
Speaker A:Yes, I think so, yes.
Speaker A:Although of course, you know, as a small child you don't label it science, it's just your interest.
Speaker C:On a related follow up question, I think, fortunately nowadays there are fewer defined barriers for girls entering science, but nevertheless fewer girls, say, pick to do physics A level.
Speaker C:What would you suggest should be done to try and encourage girls to consider scientific careers now?
Speaker A:Yes, it's definitely a cultural thing because in other countries the gender breakdown is different.
Speaker A:So it's something particularly in the English speaking countries, you find in some of the more Latin countries, for instance, that many, many more girls do science or of all sorts.
Speaker A:So it's some kind of cultural hang up that we have as Brits, I think, I think the best thing you can do is show young girls that women, well and their parents show them that girls can do science.
Speaker A:Girls can do science very well and can get great fun out of doing science and just try and erode those barriers.
Speaker D:So obviously you did your postgraduate studies in Cambridge.
Speaker D:Can we go back to that time a little bit and can you tell us a bit about your time when you arrived for your PhD in Cambridge here at the Cavendish?
Speaker D:How did it feel?
Speaker D:What did it feel like socially, academically?
Speaker A:Coming to Cambridge was quite a shock.
Speaker A:First of all, I'd never been in the south of England, so there was a different sort of ambiance and Very quickly I discovered that there were a lot of people wandering along King's Parade, young men wandering along King's Parade, talking in terribly loud voices about what some philosopher or other had said and debating amongst themselves.
Speaker A:And I A, hadn't heard of these philosophers and B, hadn't seen this kind of behavior before and thought initially, my God, they're all terrible, terribly bright here.
Speaker A:Which, of course, is what those young men were trying to get people to think.
Speaker A:They're all terribly bright here.
Speaker A:I'm not bright enough.
Speaker A:They've made a mistake admitting me.
Speaker A:They'll discover their mistake and they'll throw me out.
Speaker A:I now know that this is classic imposter syndrome, but I didn't know the name.
Speaker A:Indeed, it maybe even wasn't named at that point.
Speaker A:But I decided, and I think the decision was a good one, I decided I would work my very hardest so that when they threw me out, I wouldn't have a guilty conscience, I'd know I tried my best and I just wasn't good enough for this place.
Speaker D:Of course, they never threw you out.
Speaker A:They didn't actually throw me out, no, surprisingly.
Speaker C:How do you think young researchers can be, in general, help to feel that they belong?
Speaker C:I know many people still struggle with imposter syndrome.
Speaker C:What do you think is most important?
Speaker C:What should those involved in organising opportunities for young people try and do to help the situation?
Speaker A:Well, ideally, you get rid of the brash young men who go along King's Parade showing off, but I'm not sure that's achievable.
Speaker A:So probably the next thing is at induction to say, there's some damn stupid little young men, probably from public schools, and they may scare the wits out of you, but it's sham.
Speaker A:You are bright enough to be here.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:It's some sort of like, know your worth kind of statements.
Speaker A:Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:It can be quite hard to convince people of that, but you may need to keep saying it.
Speaker D:And do you have any mentors or allies who made a difference at that stage?
Speaker A:Not specifically.
Speaker A:I was, of course, belonging.
Speaker A:It was then called Newhall, now called Murray.
Speaker A:Edwards was a women's college, so that was quite helpful.
Speaker A:But I don't think there were many other people in physics, so still in a bit of a minority in that respect.
Speaker A:But they encouraged me to.
Speaker A:To be courageous, put it that way, and that was helpful.
Speaker A:Probably there wasn't anything else they could say that was much help, but, you know, hang in there, lass.
Speaker D:So can you paint us the scene a little bit for us?
Speaker D:What were you working during your PhD, what did a typical day look like when you were building and running the telescopes at the.
Speaker A:Yes, so I was in radio astronomy and spent the first two years building the radio telescope as one of a group of about probably half a dozen people in total, which involved quite a lot of manual labour out at Lordsbridge, which is a few miles outside Cambridge in a rather muddy field in all weathers.
Speaker A:I became very tanned.
Speaker A:People say, have you been skiing?
Speaker D:No, not quite.
Speaker A:And I took my share of the physical work.
Speaker A:I was spared quite a lot of the sledgehammering.
Speaker A:I was given a soldering iron instead.
Speaker A:But I did enough sledgehammering that I could hit a hockey ball from one end of the field to the other.
Speaker A:And I have to say my flipping team never learned that I could hit the hockey ball.
Speaker A:You know, they watch the ball go by and say, Jocelyn, how are we meant to get that?
Speaker D:Were you happy to take on that physical work as much as any other guy in the team?
Speaker A:Oh, yes.
Speaker A:I mean I'd been brought up in a sort of no nonsense household, so that was fine.
Speaker A:I was quite happy with that.
Speaker A:It wasn't always pleasant.
Speaker A:It could be very, very cold in winter for instance, but you do it.
Speaker D:There's this very famous photo of you sitting in that muddy field covered in many layers to protect yourself against the cold.
Speaker D:And we can absolutely picture you down there.
Speaker D:But tell us a little bit about what you were doing on those telescopes, building those telescopes.
Speaker D:What were you trying to do?
Speaker A:Well, the project was to find more objects called quasars, quasi stellar radio sources, which at that stage were very new.
Speaker A:There weren't many known.
Speaker A:They were a considerable puzzle which we now understand because there's a massive black hole in their centers.
Speaker A:They're galaxy sized things, so hundred thousand million stars in weight with a massive black hole at their center.
Speaker A:And they're very strong radio emitting objects as well.
Speaker A:There were some of the first things picked up when radio astronomy started as a subject and they.
Speaker A:The nature of these quasars was still largely, I won't say unknown, but unbelieved because suggestions were that they were massive black holes, a million hundred million times the mass of the sun at their centers and then a number of stars and things orbiting around outside.
Speaker A:And the whole picture was a little bit fantastic.
Speaker A:And there were only a few of them known anyway.
Speaker A:So, you know, but I got another hundred added to the list and yeah, they are massive black holes.
Speaker C: I'd like to ask about: Speaker A:It was a very small signal.
Speaker A:It took up about quarter inch on the charts, and the charts were producing about 4, 40 foot of paper per day.
Speaker A:So it was a very small signal, but I was being really, really thorough because I knew they were going to throw me out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:And so I worried about this quarter inch of signal that I couldn't understand.
Speaker A:And I sussed that it was something from the sky because it kept its place amongst the stars, amongst the constellations.
Speaker A:And when I showed it to my supervisor and said, what do you think this is?
Speaker A:You said, you stupid woman.
Speaker A:Most interactions with my supervisor began either, you stupid woman or you stupid girl, you stupid woman.
Speaker A:Oh God, what have I done wrong?
Speaker A:Now he says, it's all jammed into quarter inch.
Speaker A:We can't see what's going on.
Speaker A:We need an enlargement.
Speaker A:And with the technology we had, I was recording data on a long roll of chart paper.
Speaker A:With that technology, the way you get an enlargement is run the chart paper faster under the pen.
Speaker A:Everything gets spread out.
Speaker A:So that's fine, except if I keep the chart running at that speed, it gets through a whole roll of paper in 20 minutes.
Speaker A:And guess who lives at the observatory putting a fresh roll of paper in every 20 minutes day and night, so you don't leave it running at that speed.
Speaker A:Next best idea, the student goes out to the observatory, shortly before that bit of square sky is observed, switches the chart recorders to high speed, makes the observation, switches chart recorders back.
Speaker A:And I did that for several weeks and no sign of the signal.
Speaker A:So supervisor, you know, you stupid girl.
Speaker A:Something that's been and gone and done it and you've missed it.
Speaker A:And then one day I got it, and in it came pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse.
Speaker A:Very regular pulses spaced just over a second apart.
Speaker A:And when I told my supervisor that, you stupid girl, it was his normal first reaction, he just didn't believe the result.
Speaker A:But he came out to the observatory the next day at the appropriate time, stood and watched as I wired the setup up for this special observation, agreed it was all okay, and, and saw the pulses coming in with his own eye.
Speaker A:And they were still at much the same rate as the previous day.
Speaker A:So it looked reasonably stable.
Speaker A:And that began a frantic period of work.
Speaker A:You know, Jocelyn, keep making these special observations.
Speaker A:So I'm going out, you know, six miles outside Cambridge by motorbike nasty cold weather every day to make these special observations.
Speaker A:Which in due course became every night to make these observations.
Speaker A:And carried on with the usual work.
Speaker A:And then the next thing we do is.
Speaker A:Well, it's probably because Jocelyn's wired something up wrong.
Speaker A:But what we ought to do is see if a separate radio telescope with its own detectors and so on can also see it.
Speaker A:So we confidentially enlisted the advice of another PhD student and his superior supervisor.
Speaker A:The PhD student actually knew all about it.
Speaker A:Because the grad students were in the attic, all of us together.
Speaker A:And we all knew how everybody was getting on and how they were finding.
Speaker A:Because we were all in the one room.
Speaker A:But it was the supervisors that were a bit more isolated.
Speaker A:So we enlisted the help of this other grad student and his supervisor to see if his radio telescope and his receiver.
Speaker A:Completely independent piece of kit to see if it could pick it up.
Speaker A:And we all went out to the observatory, the two students and their two supervisors.
Speaker A:My telescope saw that bit of sky first.
Speaker A:And there was the thing pulsing nicely.
Speaker A:And then we went and stood and looked at the output from Robin's telescope, and nothing happened.
Speaker A:And the two supervisors start walking down this long, long laboratory.
Speaker A:What is this that shows with that telescope but not that one could.
Speaker A:No, it can't be that.
Speaker A:But what about.
Speaker A:And I'm padding along behind these two academics.
Speaker A:Robin stays by his pen recorder.
Speaker A:And suddenly there's a shriek from Robin.
Speaker A:Here it is.
Speaker A:We all charged back.
Speaker A:Robin had miscalculated by 10 minutes when his telescope would see that patch of sky.
Speaker A:If he'd miscalculated by, say, half an hour, we'd have all gone home and the story would be different.
Speaker A:So that was a close call, but it was a huge relief to me.
Speaker A:Here's a completely separate piece of kit picking up the same signal.
Speaker A:So it's real.
Speaker A:So my supervisor started believing me, which was good.
Speaker D:He changed the way he started his sentences when talking.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:It became a bit more student friendly,.
Speaker C:Shall we say, respectful, perhaps, for listeners who haven't thought about neutron stars in school.
Speaker C:Could you maybe talk a little bit more about what a pulsar is and how perhaps it can be understood?
Speaker A:Yes, I think it's likely that.
Speaker A:Unlikely that anybody's learned about this in school.
Speaker A:Big stars, stars that are much bigger than our sun.
Speaker A:Run through their life actually very fast.
Speaker A:Because they're bigger stars.
Speaker A:They've got hotter centers, and so the reactions go faster.
Speaker A:And although they're bigger, they get through their resources faster.
Speaker A:And when they've got to the end of their resources, they actually explode.
Speaker A:And in the explosion, the core gets compressed and everything else gets flung out into space.
Speaker A:It's what we call a supernova explosion.
Speaker A:And in these supernova explosions, the compressing of the core makes these very compact kinds of stars called neutron stars that we now know is what the pulsars are.
Speaker D:So that discovery of pulsars have reshaped our understanding of the universe.
Speaker A:Oh, that's a bit strong.
Speaker A:Reshaped our understanding of evolution of stars.
Speaker A:The universe, I think, kept its shape.
Speaker D:Fair enough.
Speaker D:But, so tell us in a few words, why do they matter?
Speaker D:Why pulsars are so.
Speaker D:Yeah, well, they're interesting.
Speaker A:They're intriguing because they are extreme.
Speaker A:They have much the same amount of material as our sun, but they're squashed into a ball that's only 10km radius, 10 miles across.
Speaker A:It's very, very densely packed stuff that you couldn't find here on Earth.
Speaker A:So there's a lot of interesting physics when you have that amount of material compressed into a ball that's only 10 miles across.
Speaker A:So they're interesting from that point of view.
Speaker A:They're also interesting because this spinning star and its pulses turns out it pulses very, very accurately.
Speaker A:And so we've got some handy clocks in the forms of these pulsars distributed throughout the galaxy.
Speaker A:And having clocks in space is quite useful for checking relativity theory and things like that.
Speaker A:So they've been used to test other bits of physics as well as being of interest in their own.
Speaker C: so after your discovery, the: Speaker C:When you look back now, what do you most want people to understand about how credit works in big scientific projects?
Speaker C: nd has this changed since the: Speaker A:There's no Nobel Prize in astronomy.
Speaker A:The nearest is the Nobel Prize in Physics, and that was the prize that they got until then, the physics committee for the Nobel Prize, the committee that allocated the physics Nobel Prize had never considered astrophysics, astronomy important enough to give it the physics prize, to give anybody as an astronomer the physics prize.
Speaker A:So this was the very first time that the physics prize had gone to anything astronomical.
Speaker A:And I knew instantly that that was an important precedent and that in due course, other astronomers, astrophysicists, would get that prize.
Speaker A:And indeed, that's turned out to be the case.
Speaker A:A fair number of astrophysicists and cosmologists have had the Nobel Physics Prize.
Speaker A:So it was a very important precedent, and I saw that immediately.
Speaker D:But do you think.
Speaker D:So to go back To Charlotte's question about the culture of recognition in science, do you think things have changed since the 60s or.
Speaker A:Yeah, yes, I think they have changed.
Speaker A:First of all, they've become a bit more conscious of gender issues.
Speaker A:The prize committee, that's probably the main one.
Speaker A:But they've also in general become a bit more thinking, a bit more widely, which is good.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:If a young researcher is listening who worries that their contribution won't be seen, what practical advice would you give to them?
Speaker A:There's not a huge amount they can do.
Speaker A:They can insist that their name is on the paper that publishes the results, and that's the main thing.
Speaker A:It's often up to that person's colleagues, actually, to promote their case.
Speaker A:It's difficult to promote your own case.
Speaker A:I mean, some people do, but are known to be promoting their own cases, which is a bit counterproductive.
Speaker A:So having some good colleagues and some good friends helps.
Speaker D:So after Cambridge, your career took you through several roles and institutions, and expanding from physicist to advocate and leader.
Speaker D:You've held major leadership roles, including President of the Royal Astronomical Society and President of the Institute of Physics, amongst many others.
Speaker D:And you've been an outspoken, fierce advocate for women in science.
Speaker D:I mean, probably the answer is obvious, but when did you start to feel a responsibility to help change the culture rather than just live with it, I wonder?
Speaker A:I've not thought about that, to be honest.
Speaker A:I quite early on joined or was one of the initial group, actually, I was one of the initiators of a group to recognize women in science and encourage departments, university departments, to monitor how many women they had in the department and whether the women were progressing as well as the men.
Speaker A:So this small group of women set up a project that became known as Athena Swan.
Speaker D:And still going.
Speaker A:Oh, yes, and still needed and gone to other countries, which is really good as well.
Speaker A:In the usa, for instance, it includes race as well as gender, but it's gone to many English speaking countries and it encourages universities and university departments to stop and ask the question, how many women do we have in engineering or in physics and how are they progressing compared with their male colleagues?
Speaker A:And the answers to both those questions are usually slightly unsatisfactory.
Speaker A:So it's important that the issue of women and the success of women in engineering and science is still monitored.
Speaker D:Indeed.
Speaker D:And it's still strongly going, as we said.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C: In: Speaker C:Remarkably, you then chose to donate the prize money.
Speaker C:Could you tell us a bit about why you decided to do this and what you hope will come of it.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Maybe something like this will happen to you or some of the listeners.
Speaker A:You suddenly get an email message or a phone call saying you've won $3 million or something like that.
Speaker D:Fingers crossed.
Speaker A:In my case, it was $3 million.
Speaker A:It was prize, USA prize.
Speaker A:And then you have to think very, very quickly.
Speaker A:They typically give you about a week before they go public.
Speaker A:Once it's public, everybody will be contacting you with their pet projects, good, bad and indifferent, begging for some money.
Speaker A:So you've got a week to decide what you're doing with the money.
Speaker A:And I have a son who's a physicist and some very good friends amongst physics, and talking with them, I was keen.
Speaker A:The money was used somehow to advance more women in physics, basically.
Speaker A:And we ended up by asking the Institute of Physics, which is the UK's body for physicists, academic physicists, professional physicists, asking them if they would be interested in having this denote nation and using it to fund female grad students in physics, any branch of physics, not just astro.
Speaker A:And surprise, surprise, they said yes.
Speaker A:The chief executive claimed they'd been thinking of doing something like that anyway.
Speaker A:Don't know whether that was true or not, but they certainly would have been monitoring the number of women in physics and could see that it could do with some improvement.
Speaker A:So the Institute of Physics took on the US$3 million, which is a bit over 2 million UK pounds, and I think have put quite a bit of their own money into it as well, and have had a program going ever since then, funding female and other minority people to do PhDs.
Speaker A:Other minority might be disability, for example, and they're awarding something like a dozen each year, maybe more than that.
Speaker A:And the first students are now graduating.
Speaker A:I've been to one of their graduation ceremonies, which was great.
Speaker A:So they've got their PhDs, and I believe it makes physics departments healthier by including more females, minorities, people with disabilities, so that physics departments aren't too dominated by white males.
Speaker A:Maybe they still are dominated by white males, but not to the same extent as they used to be.
Speaker D:You often said that diversity isn't just a moral issue, it also improves science.
Speaker D:It's important to improve science itself.
Speaker D:Is that what better science actually look like when more voices are genuinely included?
Speaker A:I think the more people you can get who think in slightly different ways, the better.
Speaker A:An awful lot of physicists think along the same lines.
Speaker A:But if you increase diversity, you will maybe increase the diversity of thinking and that has to be good for the subject.
Speaker D:When you think about talent in science.
Speaker D:And what do we still misunderstand about that, especially when it gets to become a physicist?
Speaker D:Like what is.
Speaker A:Yes, I think it's still the case in high schools in the country that physics classes will be predominantly male.
Speaker A:So obviously there's still perception out there that it's a man subject and maybe women can't do it.
Speaker A:Patently not clear.
Speaker A:Patently not true.
Speaker A:We see many, many physics classes where the young women do brilliantly, and that's in spite of being in a minority.
Speaker A:So, yeah, I do believe that diversity and having a diverse body of people doing something is good for that subject.
Speaker C:Pulsars have become central objects in modern astrophysics.
Speaker C:When you look at the field today, what surprises you most about how pulsar science has evolved since the first discovery?
Speaker A:Well, we've learned a lot about the insides of neutron stars, which are very, very dense.
Speaker A:So there's been a lot of interesting developments there, some amazing ones as well.
Speaker A:But pulsars, because they are very accurate pulsators, are wonderful instruments for the physicist.
Speaker A:And I suspect we haven't yet exploited all of that.
Speaker A:I think there's maybe even more to come.
Speaker A:But it's been interesting to see how the subject has grown, developed, been used.
Speaker A:It's exciting.
Speaker D:So is there any big unanswered question about radio astronomy or even the universe that you personally hope that we crack in the next decade or two?
Speaker A:I think there are questions.
Speaker A:I think we've got the broad picture, put it that way.
Speaker A:I. I think there are questions about exactly how that works out, what makes it function the way it functions.
Speaker A:So there's still a lot of work to be done?
Speaker A:Undoubtedly, yes.
Speaker C:Finally, to wrap things up, what advice would you give to young, aspiring scientists, and in particular to those who feel that they don't quite fit the stereotype of a physicist and they're not quite sure that they belong.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:Hang in there.
Speaker A:Don't give up, please.
Speaker D:Thank you.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker D:Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker D:That was great.
Speaker D:Thank you so much.
Speaker D:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you to Jocelyn Bell Burnell for joining us today and to Charlotte Lane for co hosting this episode.
Speaker B:If you'd like to learn more about what we just discussed and more generally about our work at the Cavendish Laboratory, please have a look at the show notes or visit our website.
Speaker B:If you have any questions you would like to ask our physicists, head to social media and tag us with the hashtag peopledoingphysics.
Speaker B:This episode was recorded and edited by Chris Brock.
Speaker B:Thank you for listening to people doing physics.
Speaker D:We'll be back soon.
