Annual Campbell Lecture 2006

The University hosted its 3rd Campbell Lecture on Tuesday, May 2nd 2006. The speaker was Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Visiting Professor at the University of and a Professorial Fellowship at Mansfield College, Oxford. Her lecture was entitled 'Careering through Astronomy.

Professor Bell Burnell, is the discoverer of the first radio pulsars. She has been awarded Oppenheimer prize, the Michelson medal, the Tinsley prize and the Magellanic Premium by learned bodies in the US and the Herschel Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society. She was made a CBE in 1999 and that year also won the Edinburgh Medal for services to science and society. Jocelyn became an FRS in 2003, and FRSE in 2004. She has served as President of the Royal Astronomical Society (2002-2004) and was elected a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2005.

Professor Bell Burnell spoke of her early academic career in a single sex girl's school, the Physics department in and later as a graduate student at an all women's college and the various challenges that these had offered. A 'live' demonstration of the Doppler effect was followed by a lively discussion of the role of women in SET and their potential to develop the public appreciation and understanding of science.

Campbell Lecture 2006


Photograph, from left to right: Dr Geraldine Clough, Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell , Professor Bill Wakeham, Zelda Franklin-Hills, Dr Malgosia Kakzmarek.