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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the author's belief that her identity as a student and a woman negatively impacted her chances of receiving recognition in the male-dominated field of science.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell highlights the challenges she faced as a woman and a student in a predominantly male academic environment, particularly concerning the Nobel Prize recognition for her contributions to astronomy. She emphasizes the systemic biases that can overshadow the achievements of women and younger researchers in science, illustrating the need for greater inclusivity and acknowledgment of diverse contributions in the field.
In practice
Use this quote to discuss the challenges women face in STEM fields during a panel on gender equality.
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 universe is very big - there's about 100,000 million galaxies in the universe, so that means an awful lot of stars. And some of them, I'm pretty certain, will have planets where there was life, is life, or maybe will be life. I don't believe we're alone.
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.
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.
When I went to my local grammar school, Lurgan College, girls were not encouraged to study science. My parents hit the roof and, along with other parents, demanded a curriculum change.
My generation was the turning point. Women older than us didn't expect to have jobs or careers; those younger did. But we were where it was changing - which is interesting but uncomfortable.
Mathematics deals exclusively with the relations of concepts to each other without consideration of their relation to experience.
The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation.
If you come from mathematics, as I do, you realize that there are many problems, even classical problems, which cannot be solved by computation alone.
The fact that mathematics does such a good job of describing the Universe is a mystery that we don't understand. And a debt that we will probably never be able to repay.
It doesn't matter what country or what political system you are from. Space brings you together.
Early experience shapes the structure and function of the brain. This reveals the fundamental way in which gene expression is determined by experience.
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