A Quaker Astonomer Reflects: can a scientist also be religious? (The James Backhouse Lectures) (Volume 23)
(World renown astronomer and Quaker Jocelyn Bell Burnell r...)
World renown astronomer and Quaker Jocelyn Bell Burnell reflects on the big issues confronting scientists who also have a strong spiritual belief system. How can the principles of science be reconciled with the faith required by religion? Does scientific investigation call into question the givens of religion. While specific to her Quaker beliefs, Burnell's reflections apply to many other religions as well. This is the 2013 James Backhouse Lecture Series, sponsored by the Society of Friends (Quakers( in Australia.
Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a Northern Irish astrophysicist.
Background
Susan Jocelyn Bell (Burnell) was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on July 15, 1943. Her father was the architect for the Armagh Observatory, which was close to their home. Her early interest in astronomy was encouraged by the observatory staff.
Education
She studied at the Mount School in York, England, from 1956 to 1961. She earned a B. S. in physics at the University of Glasgow in 1965. That same year, she began work on her Ph. D. at Cambridge University. There, under the supervision of Antony Hewish, she constructed and operated a 81. 5 megaherz radio telescope.
Career
For two years, Bell Burnell constructed the radio telescope which she would begin to operate in July 1967. Each complete coverage of the sky with the radio telescope required four days. Bell Burnell then had to analyze about 400 feet of paper chart. She noted: "We analyzed (actually, we didn't, I analyzed) all this chart by hand. " The signal of the pulsar occupied about half an inch of the 400 feet of chart. For the first time in the history of radio astronomy, a large area of the sky had been repeatedly surveyed with an extremely sensitive radio telescope tuned to meter wavelengths. The subsequent discovery of the pulsar, in 1967, ranks as an important milestone in the history of astrophysics. It has been written that "In an earlier age the pulsar would no doubt have been called 'Bell's star'; today it is simply known as CP 1919. " "CP" stands for "Cambridge pulsar. " The pulsars appeared as an appendix to Bell Burnell's Ph. D. thesis. In 1967 Sir Martin Ryle and Tony Hewish, from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, with Hewish honored for the discovery of pulsars. This was the first time the prize was given for work in observational astronomy. The Nobel Prize announcement triggered a public controversy. Sir Fred Hoyle, the eminent British astronomer, argued that Bell Burnell should have shared the Nobel Prize. Radio Astronomy Work Bell Burnell held a Science Research Council fellowship from 1968 to 1970 and a junior teaching fellowship from 1970 to 1973 at the University of Southampton. During that time she studied the mid-latitude electron density trough in the topside ionosphere using data from the Alouette satellite, the enhancements of interplanetary scintillation, and their relationship to co-rotating streams in the interplanetary medium and to Forbush decreases. She developed and calibrated a 1-10 million electron volts gamma-ray telescope. She was employed as a researcher at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at the University College in London; as a graduate programmer from 1974 to 1976, then as an associate research follow from 1976 to 1982. She analyzed data from a rocket flight to study low energy x-ray emission from galactic features. With the x-ray spectrometer on the Ariel V satellite she observed galactic sources, including transient x-ray sources and binary star systems, globular clusters, active galaxies, and clusters of galaxies. After 1982 Bell Burnell worked as a senior research fellow at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland. There she made infrared observations of galaxies with active nuclei coordinated with radio, optical, ultraviolet, and x-ray observations. She also observed infrared counterparts of galactic x-ray sources. Bell Burnell was the editor of The Observatory from 1973 to 1976. Elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1969, she became a council member from 1978 to 1981. She was elected a member of the International Astronomical Union in 1979 and served on the Science and Engineering Research Council, Astronomy I Committee from 1978 to 1984. In 1997 she headed the Physics Department at Open University in the United Kingdom.
(World renown astronomer and Quaker Jocelyn Bell Burnell r...)
Views
She studied interplanetary scintillation of compact radio sources. Bell Burnell detected the first four pulsars. The term "pulsar" is an abbreviation of pulsating radio star or of rapidly pulsating radio sources. Pulsars represent rotating neutron stars that emit brilliant flashes of electromagnetic radiation at each revolution, like beacons from a lighthouse. The observation of pulsars requires the use of radio telescopes. In 15 years, about 350 pulsars were found. Their pulse periods range from 33 microseconds to 4 seconds.
Quotations:
“Scientists should never claim that something is absolutely true. You should never claim perfect, or total, or 100% because you never ever get there. ”
“By the end of my PhD I could swing a sledgehammer. ”
“If we assume we've arrived: we stop searching, we stop developing. ”
“Looking at the universe as a whole; cosmology, the birth, life and death of the whole universe, we used to have a nice simple model. Then we had to add things like dark energy, and our nice simple picture is getting messier and messier and messier. ”
Connections
Bell Burnell was married Martin Burnell in 1968 and has one son. The couple divorced in 1993.
The Albert A. Michelson Medal of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia
1973
1973
. The Royal Medal of the Royal Society
2015
2015
Doctor of Science: Heriot-Watt University
1993
1993
Haverford College
2000
2000
University of Newcastle
1995
1995
University of Hull
2015
2015
Belfast
2002
2002
University of Miami
1978
1978
Harvard University
2007
2007
Queen's University
. Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize of the American Astronomical Society
1986
1986
University of Portsmouth
2002
2002
. Doctor of the University: University of York
1994
1994
Dublin
2008
2008
. Jansky Lectureship before the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
1995
1995
University of Edinburgh
2003
2003
. Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
1989
1989
Rutgers University
2016
2016
. Magellanic Premium of the American Philosophical Society
2000
2000
University of Michigan
2008
2008
. The Women of the Year Prudential Lifetime Achievement Award
2015
2015
Williams College
2000
2000
. William E. Gordon and Elva Gordon distinguished lecture at the Arecibo Observatory on 27 June 2006. The Grote Reber Medal at the General Assembly of the International Radio Science Union in Istanbul
2011
2011
Dublin City University
2015
2015
University of Warwick
1995
1995
University of Keele
2005
2005
University of St Andrews
1999
1999
University of London
1999
1999
University of Southampton
2008
2008
Durham University
2007
2007
University of Glasgow
1997
1997
University of Sussex
1997
1997
Trinity College
. The Institute of Physics President’s Medal
2017
2017
University of Cambridge
1996
1996
. J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize from the Center for Theoretical Studies