Bursts, bangs and things that go bump in the night – transient astronomy, by Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell

We are honoured that Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is finding time in her very busy diary to deliver a talk to Members, online via our usual Zoom platform.

With improved technology astronomers are now able to observe things that rapidly change their brightness. Opening up this ‘transient’ domain has revealed a wealth of amazing phenomena which will be introduced here.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell inadvertently discovered pulsars as a graduate student in radio astronomy in Cambridge, opening up a new branch of astrophysics – work recognised by the award of a Nobel Prize to her supervisor.

She has subsequently worked in many roles in many branches of astronomy, working part-time while raising a family. She is now a Visiting Academic in Oxford, and the Chancellor of the University of Dundee, Scotland.  She has been President of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society, in 2008 became the first female President of the Institute of Physics…