Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Pulsars

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

• Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, she demonstrated a knack for science during her time at boarding school.
• Resolved to pursue astronomy as a teenager.
• Graduated from Glasgow University in 1965.
• Began her PhD thesis at Cambridge University, focusing on twinkling quasars.
• Under Antony Hewish's supervision, she aided in constructing an array of radio telescopes for detecting quasars.
• In November 1967, she detected unusual signals: radio waves pulsating every 1.337 seconds from a fixed spatial point.
• Over the next two months, similar signals were found in other regions of space.
• Determined, with Hewish, that the radio waves originated from the radiation beam of a rapidly rotating, strongly magnetized neutron star.
• Each rotation caused a "pulse," leading to the name "pulsar" for this new type of star.
• She initially named the signals LGM-1 (Little Green Men-1) due to their precise nature.
• The term "pulsar" was officially adopted in 1968.
• In 1967, she observed a pulsar, and Antony Hewish reported her discovery in a Nature article in 1968.
• Although not named in the award herself, her supervisor received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974.
• Made a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in 2007 for her contributions to astronomy.

Tak Wah Mak

• Immunologist and molecular biologist who discovered how T-cells recognize antigens.
• He advanced molecular comprehension of cancer cells.
• Born in southern China in 1946.
• He spent his childhood in Hong Kong before moving to the US with his family.
• Studied at the University of Wisconsin.
• In 1968, he earned a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Alberta, Canada.
• Mak's T-cell research solved an immunological problem, uncovering how T-cell receptors recognize antigens.
• His 1983 discovery revealed that T-cell receptor genes have a distinct genetic sequence and origin.
• Applied molecular techniques to explore immune responses to cancer.
• In 1972, following completion of his doctorate, he accepted a fellowship at the Ontario Cancer Institute
• In March 1984, the Nature journal published the details the genetic encoding of human T-cell receptors
• He used experiments with mice to isolate genetic function for cancer and immunology studies in 1988.
• In 1999, he identified a chemical to block the fuel supply of Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars while working on her PhD at Cambridge University. Under Antony Hewish's supervision, she detected unusual radio signals. These signals were identified as radiation beams from rapidly rotating, strongly magnetized neutron stars, now known as pulsars.