Science

A grad student found pulsars in the chart paper — the Nobel went to her supervisor

In 1967, Cambridge PhD student Jocelyn Bell Burnell noticed a strange, precisely repeating radio signal in miles of telescope chart paper, dubbed 'LGM-1' as a joke about little green men. It was the first pulsar ever detected, a rapidly spinning neutron star. The 1974 Nobel Prize for the discovery went to her supervisor Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle; Bell Burnell was left off.

A. Hewish, S. J. Bell, J. D. H. Pilkington, P. F. Scott, R. A. Collins, Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source — Nature, 1968

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