The Nobel Prize in Physics for 1974 was shared between Bell's supervisor Anthony Hewish and Sir Martin Ryle. Ryle was the founder of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, which was part of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, and while he and Hewish did collaborate on certain matters, Ryle was not directly involved in the discovery of pulsars.
Jocelyn Bell, on the other hand, was instrumental in the discovery; it was she who first reported the anomaly that led to it, only to have Hewish dismiss it initially as "interference". Her omission from the list of Nobel recipients was controversial at the time, and is no less so today. There is more than a hint of sexism about it, and in 2020 Bell described the attitude of the media as "disgusting". Hewish, she said, would be asked about the astrophysics, while she was treated as "human interest" – asked about her "vital statistics", how many boyfriends she had, and the colour of her hair. She was even asked to undo some buttons for the cameras.
But that was the media; what of the Nobel Foundation?
If Jocelyn Bell had been included on the list of Physics laureates that year, she would have been only the third female recipient – after Marie Cure (1903) and Maria Goeppert Meyer (1963). Some no doubt feel that this alone is enough evidence to prove the charge of sexism, but Jocelyn Bell Burnell herself was less forthright. She commented in 1977: "I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them. Finally, I am not myself upset about it – after all, I am in good company, am I not!"
© Haydn Thompson 2022