Jocelyn Bell Burnell

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/07/she-made-the-discovery-but-a-man-got-the-nobel-a-half-century-later-shes-won-a-3-million-prize/

By Antonia Noori Farzan

These days, her Nobel snub is often cited as an example of how women’s contributions to science get erased or overlooked. But Bell Burnell, who teaches astronomy at Oxford University, says she isn’t bothered by it.

“I feel I’ve done very well out of not getting a Nobel Prize,” she told the Guardian on Thursday. “If you get a Nobel Prize you have this fantastic week and then nobody gives you anything else. If you don’t get a Nobel Prize you get everything that moves. Almost every year there’s been some sort of party because I’ve got another award. That’s much more fun.”

As for the $3 million, Bell Burnell, whose Quaker faith preaches living simply, doesn’t plan on keeping any of it.

“I don’t need a Porsche or Ferrari,” she told The Washington Post. “I don’t have an affluent lifestyle.”

Instead, the money will go to creating scholarships for people from underrepresented backgrounds who want to study physics. The funds will be administered by the U.K.’s Institute of Physics, and Bell Burnell is hopeful that having a more diverse array of people entering the field will lead to even more new discoveries.

“Maybe,” she joked, “having some people who suffer from impostor syndrome is not a bad thing.”