Why She Didn't Get The Nobel Prize? Poem by Paul Hartal

Jocelyn Bell, a young graduate student of astronomy
at Cambridge University, in 1967 observed bursts
of radio wave radiation at small intervals. They came
from a region between the stars Vega and Altair.

Astronomers determined that the source of the radiation
was a rapidly rotating neutron star,
a pulsating star, or pulsar for short.
The radiation is created by electrons transversing
the star's powerful magnetic field. The pulsar itself
is perhaps only about eight kilometers across
but as massive as the sun.

Although it was Jocelyn Bell who discovered
the pulsating star, it was her supervisor, Antony Hewish,
who received the 1974 Nobel Prize for physics,
which he shared with Sir Martin Ryle.

When Antony Hewish was asked why Jocelyn Bell
did not get the Nobel Prize for the discovery of pulsars,
he replied: 'She used my radio telescope for the discovery'.