Didcot First lists information about one off community and not for profit events that are open to everyone in the wider Didcot Garden Town area. Any events we list here must be run for the benefit of the whole community and are the responsibility of the event organisers, so please contact them directly if you require further information.
If you would like to promote your community event here please send details to hello@didcotfirst.org
Please contact Didcot Café Scientifique if you would like to be added to the Mailing list on cafesci@didcotfirst.org
- This event has passed.
July 2023 – Didcot Cafe Scientifique, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell – ‘Bursts, bangs and things that go bump in the night’.
18th July 2023 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Tickets are available from the Cornerstone box office in person or online here
18th July 2023
The Auditorium, Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot
7.30pm – 9pm
‘Bursts, bangs and things that go bump in the night’
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell
As astronomers’ telescopes, cameras, etc have improved, we have been able to use shorter exposures. We are discovering that many stars, galaxies, etc are very far from steady and stable. In this talk I will describe the exciting wealth of short-term flares, flashes, eruptions, outbursts… that astronomers are now discovering.’
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 for the UK and Ireland, and in 2014 the first female President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was one of the small group of women scientists that set up the Athena SWAN scheme.
She has received many honours, including a $3M Breakthrough Prize in 2018.
The public appreciation and understanding of science have always been important to her, and she is much in demand as a speaker and broadcaster. In her spare time, she gardens, listens to choral music, and is active in the Quakers. She has co-edited an anthology of poetry with an astronomical theme – ‘Dark Matter; Poems of Space’.