The radio astronomer Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (born 1943) discovered the first pulsar (stars that release regular bursts of radio waves) in 1967.

Susan Jocelyn Bell (Burnell) was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on July 15, 1943. Her father was the architect for the Armagh Observatory, which was close to their home. Her early interest in astronomy was encouraged by the observatory staff.

She studied at the Mount School in York, England, from 1956 to 1961. She earned a B.S. in physics at the University of Glasgow in 1965. That same year, she began work on her Ph.D. at Cambridge University. There, under the supervision of Antony Hewish, she constructed and operated a 81.5-megahertz radio telescope. She studied interplanetary scintillation of compact radio sources.

Bell Burnell detected the first four pulsars. The term "pulsar" is an abbreviation of "pulsating radio star," or "rapidly pulsating radio sources." Pulsars very probably originate from rotating neutron...