Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Born 15 July 1943 in Northern Ireland, Bell Burnell made the discovery while conducting doctoral research: radio pulsars, previously unknown stellar objects. The 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics followed - but the committee awarded it to others on the project, not her. She went on to lead the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002 to 2004, the Institute of Physics from 2008 to 2010, and served as Chancellor of the University of Dundee from 2018 to 2023. In 2018 she won the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics and donated the entire $3 million to fund female, minority, and refugee students pursuing physics research. In 2021 she became only the second woman, after Dorothy Hodgkin in 1976, to receive the Copley Medal.