Hooray for Jocelyn Bell Burnell – the world needs more scientists like her | Susan Watts

As well as being a brilliant physicist, the winner of the Breakthrough prize is a generous, inspirational role model

It was not a surprise to read that Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell has said she will donate the money she has just won as recipient of the 2.3m Breakthrough prize to help students underrepresented in physics to study the subject she loves.

As a research student in the 1960s, Bell Burnell noticed a mysterious pulsing signal in data from a radio telescope. In time, and after much painstaking observation on her part, this was revealed to be a new type of star: a pulsar. She was the first scientist ever to have detected one - but in the end the Nobel prize recognising the discovery went to her male PhD supervisor.