Unstoppable: Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber are both scientists, but it turns out there’s a lot they don’t know about the women that came before them. In Unstoppable, Julia and Ella tell each other the hidden, world-shaping stories of the scientists, engineers and innovators that they wish they’d known about when they were starting out in science. This week, the story of a young PhD student whose discovery of a previously unknown object in the universe won a Nobel Prize...but not for her.

On a cold night in 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell sits alone in an observatory, reading the data from a radio telescope. As the pattern in the data suddenly changes, she realises she has discovered an entirely new kind of cosmic phenomenon. Uncover her life story, from getting snubbed for the Nobel Prize to paving our knowledge of distant and invisible aspects of the universe.

(Image: Jocelyn Bell Burnell attends the 2019 Breakthrough Prize at NASA Ames Research Center on November 4, 2018 in Mountain View, California. Credit: Kimberly White/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.
0:05.4	My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.
0:10.7	The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.
0:17.4	With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to
0:22.4	helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all
0:28.1	put together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life,
0:34.9	check out BBC Sounds.
0:43.3	It's 11pm on a cold, dark December night in 1967.
0:49.3	While most people are tucked up in their beds, a young PhD student waits inside an observatory just outside of Cambridge, England.
0:51.3	She's holding her breath as she watches a machine draw a red line
0:55.6	onto graph paper. She is waiting, hoping, for any slight change in the signal from a telescope
1:01.7	that the machine is connected to. Then, suddenly, the pen leaps on the paper at a different rate.
1:08.5	It is small and fast, but unmistakable. The second confirmation of her
1:14.0	astronomical discovery. I'm Ella Hubber. And I'm Julia Raby. We're both scientists turned radio
1:20.2	presenters. And these are the stories we wish we'd known when we were starting out as scientists.
1:25.4	This is unstoppable for discovery on the BBC World Service.
1:29.8	Julia, today I'm going to tell you a story of scientific stargazing and a mysterious signal
1:35.2	coming from space.
1:36.5	Oh, aliens.
1:37.9	The press certainly thought that it could be, but no, though I think this discovery was
1:42.2	something just as exciting, an entirely new kind of cosmic phenomenon spotted by one woman.
1:49.3	And her name is Jocelyn Bell-Bernel.
	...

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