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" We live inside our universe and cannot get a bird's-eye view of it from outside. And we cannot even see all of our universe. Distant parts of it are expanding away from us so fast that they are invisible; they go faster than the speed of light. Having bigger telescopes to see fainter stars will not help us here: invisible is truly invisible. "

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Universe

View

" When I started secondary school, it was assumed that the girls would do domestic science and the boys would do science, and I wasn't too happy with that. "

" There are some countries where there is not an issue with women in physics. Malaysia, for example, has physics departments where 60 per cent of undergraduates are female, and France and Italy are strong, too. It is not about ability but more about what the culture says is appropriate. "

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Strong

Culture

" I became conscious in later life that I had been given an education that enabled me to do all kinds of jobs, but often, jobs weren't open to me. "

" Although we don't know what is outside our universe, astronomers still wonder. Several pictures of what there might be have been dreamed up. An interesting one, called multiverse, has lots of universes. Picture it as a foam of bubbles. Our universe would be one bubble, and we'd be surrounded by lots of other bubbles. "

" I know from another pulsar astronomer who won the Nobel that you get no peace. You're asked about every subject under the sun. It quite wrecks your life. "

" There's some evidence that if you're recruiting, you tend to recruit a mini-me. Then you have a very comfortable group round a table. You all think alike. You agree. People are arguing that the banking crisis was because too many of the relevant bodies were thinkalikes, and that if they'd had more diversity, maybe it wouldn't have happened. "

" The more diverse a research group or a business, the more robust it is, the more flexible it is, and the better it succeeds. "

" We didn't get television until quite late, the late fifties, but we had radio, and I can remember listening to the Korean War news on the radio with my family and sensing the anxiety of the adults although not understanding it myself, not understanding exactly what was going on. "

" My father was an architect. "

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Architect

Father

" Arguably, my student status and perhaps my gender were also my downfall with respect to the Nobel Prize, which was awarded to Professor Antony Hewish and Professor Martin Ryle. At the time, science was still perceived as being carried out by distinguished men. "

" Science is a quest for understanding. "

" Throughout my working life, I've been either one of very few women or the most senior woman in the place. "

" Demarcation disputes between supervisor and student are always difficult, probably impossible to resolve... it is the supervisor who has the final responsibility for the success or failure of the project. "

" I didn't always have research jobs. "

" A search for truth seems to me to be full of pitfalls. We all have different understandings of what truth is, and we'll each believe - or we are in danger of each believing - that our truth is the one and only absolute truth, which is why I say it's full of pitfalls. "

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Believe

" I'm the eldest of four children: a brother next after me and then two sisters. "

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Children

Four

" I am very conscious that, having worked part time, having had a rather disrupted career, my research record is a good deal patchier than any man's of a comparable age. "

" If you look at other countries, you'll find lots of girls doing physics, engineering, and science. It's something to do with the kind of culture we have in the English-speaking world about what's appropriate for each of the two sexes. "

" We still don't know what about 96 per cent of the universe is made of. It is dark matter and dark energy, but we have no idea what it is. "

" I was born in Northern Ireland, also known as Ulster, and I'm Scots-Irish, therefore. "

" That is one of the things that has come out of the discovery of pulsars - more knowledge about the space between the stars. "

" In Quakerism, your understanding of God is revised in light of your own experience, while in research science, you revise your model in light of data from experiments. "

" When I got engaged to be married, it was assumed that I would quit science and be a housewife. It was considered shameful if a married woman had to work - it implied that her husband couldn't earn enough to keep her. "