:00:02. > :00:12.tickets is illegal in the UK. That is the summary of the
:00:12. > :00:13.
:00:13. > :00:19.headlines. Now it is time for My guess today is a scientist of
:00:19. > :00:24.the rare distinction. Jocelyn Bell Bunnell was a Queen -- key member
:00:24. > :00:29.of the team which discovered pulsars, neutrons stars. She became
:00:29. > :00:33.one of the world's most renowned astrophysicists. Remarkable not
:00:33. > :00:38.just for the originality of a research, but also for her gender.
:00:38. > :00:43.The rat her career she has placed a trail for women in a predominantly
:00:43. > :00:53.male world. -- throughout. Why are there so few women at sides's top
:00:53. > :01:15.
:01:15. > :01:23.Jocelyn Bell Bunnell, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you. Our want to
:01:23. > :01:28.take you back to your student life, when you were studying. How were
:01:28. > :01:38.unusual was it to be a Yousuf Raza Gilani who loved and excelled at
:01:38. > :01:38.
:01:38. > :01:41.science? -- girl. It was certainly unusual to be a girl who was
:01:41. > :01:46.interested in the physical sciences. They have always been more women in
:01:46. > :01:50.Britain to ring the biological sciences. Even as a kid going into
:01:50. > :02:00.secondary school, the assumption was that the girls would do
:02:00. > :02:00.
:02:00. > :02:04.domestic science and the boys would do science. Was it difficult being
:02:05. > :02:10.the only goal in some of your classroom situations? I have been
:02:10. > :02:13.the only female or the most senior female for a lot of my life. Parts
:02:13. > :02:17.of it had been tough and clearly it is a bit more lonely if you are the
:02:17. > :02:25.only one. Did it ever reached a point where you thought yourself,
:02:25. > :02:29.actually, I am not really enjoying this? There were times when it was
:02:29. > :02:35.tough, undoubtedly. I knew I wanted to be an astronomer and the path I
:02:35. > :02:38.was taking would make me an astronomer. So I gave it my best.
:02:38. > :02:42.haven't had some extraordinary things about you. At one point you
:02:42. > :02:47.said you have learned how to control your blushes because the
:02:47. > :02:51.young men at Glasgow University were being so vociferous when you
:02:51. > :02:57.were in class that you had to be able to control things like
:02:57. > :03:04.blushing. If you blushed, they enjoyed it and made even more noise.
:03:04. > :03:09.I discovered that one can control one's pleasures. I have lost it now,
:03:09. > :03:16.but I know it can be done. Your commitment to astronomy, it must
:03:16. > :03:24.have been quite profound. What was it about the study of the universe
:03:24. > :03:28.and stars that 10 g one? It is big, it is beautiful, it is stirring
:03:28. > :03:34.stuff. I fairly quickly realise that the physics I was learning at
:03:34. > :03:39.school could be used to study stars and galaxies. What we haven't said
:03:39. > :03:42.is that you actually went to a Quaker school end you, I think,
:03:42. > :03:48.have retained a build bridges conviction throughout your life. I
:03:48. > :03:51.want to talk about that early on. It strikes me that you're one of
:03:51. > :03:55.the very few top scientists who has set in the HARDtalk Chair who has
:03:55. > :04:01.managed to find our way of being comfortable both live cutting-edge
:04:01. > :04:06.science and with a practising religious conviction. How have you
:04:06. > :04:11.done it? It works well for me. Partly because Quakers do not have
:04:11. > :04:21.a dogma, a creed, in advance. You are meant to work it out for
:04:21. > :04:21.
:04:21. > :04:28.yourself. A bit like being a research scientist. Except that in
:04:28. > :04:32.religion, there is the notion of a divine intervention, a design, but
:04:32. > :04:37.in the end comes from God. Is that something that you have always
:04:37. > :04:44.believed in? That is only in some religions. Tonight generalise.
:04:44. > :04:48.is it not in your religion? It is not in mine. There is one other
:04:48. > :04:53.thing I want to say. I think it is because I'm Quaker that I have come
:04:53. > :04:58.through in spite of being female. Quaker women are listened to, the
:04:58. > :05:05.way women in many other churches were not listened to. That gave me
:05:05. > :05:12.an inner security, assurance, stubbornness. You mean they are
:05:12. > :05:16.listened to by people outside the Quaker community? No are was
:05:16. > :05:22.thinking more inside the church. Women other son to as much as men
:05:22. > :05:29.are there some do. -- women are listened to it as much as men are
:05:29. > :05:33.listened to. He went to Cambridge University to further your research
:05:33. > :05:36.studies and you worked on a project which had its time it was taking
:05:36. > :05:43.astronomy into new areas because you are developing a telescope the
:05:43. > :05:50.like of which we had not quite seen before. Can you explain it to me?
:05:50. > :05:54.The technique we were using was looking for the fluctuation in
:05:54. > :06:01.brightness in the radio emissions from stars. That had not been done
:06:01. > :06:06.before. In order to steady fluctuations, Q needed to collect a
:06:06. > :06:11.lot of the radio waves. So we had this massive radio telescopes that
:06:11. > :06:17.cover the area of 57 tennis courts. When I think of telescopes, I think
:06:17. > :06:21.of May be great big dishes, but it wasn't like that? It was more like
:06:21. > :06:27.an agricultural frame, it what you might grow something on. Wooden
:06:27. > :06:35.posts and wires and the wires were the antennae. But no dishes.
:06:35. > :06:38.here we are, we are in the 1960s, you are in your mid-20s, you are
:06:38. > :06:44.working with his leading astrophysicist but you are in
:06:44. > :06:48.control of the day-to-day charting of the results. What you find is
:06:48. > :06:55.some extraordinary pulses coming up on your charts. Intermittent, but
:06:55. > :07:02.when they come there is a search. What on earth did it means you at
:07:02. > :07:09.the time? I knew it was peculiar. Sufficiently peculiar that I'm
:07:09. > :07:15.anode -- notified my supervisor. He knew a lot more astrophysics then I
:07:15. > :07:21.did. Sometime is under no -- sometimes it is an advantage not to
:07:21. > :07:25.know much. He was immediately sure it was not astronomical. I, in my
:07:25. > :07:33.ignorance, did not see why it was not astronomical and I already knew
:07:33. > :07:38.that this thing went round the sky with the constellations. So we did
:07:38. > :07:44.not see eye-to-eye at that point. One possibility that you always get
:07:44. > :07:49.in your head was that it might be evidence of another life form
:07:49. > :07:53.somewhere in a distant galaxy or something. That idea got scotched
:07:53. > :07:58.very quickly. There were lots of reasons why it wasn't. The most
:07:58. > :08:04.impinging of which was when I found a second similar source of pulses
:08:04. > :08:12.in a totally different part of the galaxy. You do not have to lots of
:08:12. > :08:16.little green men on opposite sides of the universe signalling to a
:08:17. > :08:21.planet at the same time. It just does not add up. Not as far as we
:08:21. > :08:28.know. Let's cut to the chase, what you and the research team
:08:28. > :08:38.ultimately decided end proved beyond doubt was that way you have
:08:38. > :08:45.here was the remnant of a star very far away. A star which died but had
:08:45. > :08:55.left behind these incredibly dense, massive ding. Which is now known as
:08:55. > :08:57.
:08:57. > :09:00.a poor start. A pulsar or a neutrons staff. Big stars, like the
:09:00. > :09:05.once in the galaxy will end their life with an explosion. In the
:09:05. > :09:11.explosion, the call will be compressed and goes down to being
:09:11. > :09:19.about ten miles across, but Wayne 1,000, million, million, million
:09:19. > :09:27.tonnes. It spins very rapidly and sweeps a bin around. Every time the
:09:27. > :09:32.beam comes across you, you see a pulse. The discovery of this, I
:09:32. > :09:37.think it was labelled by one siders as the most important astrological
:09:37. > :09:41.discovery in the past 100 years. It tells people like you a lot about
:09:41. > :09:44.the origins of the universe, it tells a lot about Einstein's
:09:44. > :09:53.theories of gravity and relativity and whether they really work
:09:53. > :09:57.throughout the universe. And also about Buchholz. All -- of all those
:09:57. > :10:01.things listed, what do you think it tells us the most about? I do not
:10:01. > :10:06.think it tells us about the origin of the universe, but it tells us a
:10:06. > :10:11.lot about how stars behave and how they died. They tell us a lot about
:10:11. > :10:15.how material behaves when you squash it into a ball ten miles
:10:15. > :10:21.across. They are also very good clocks. When they start spinning,
:10:21. > :10:29.they keep spinning. It then means we can check out Einstein's
:10:29. > :10:37.theories. Did they always did? far, but the pulsar astronomers
:10:37. > :10:42.have not done yet, but certainly Einstein was right to a remarkable
:10:42. > :10:48.amount of accuracy. I mentioned at the very beginning day you are one
:10:48. > :10:53.of the leading female scientists in your field. What many people always
:10:53. > :11:03.associate with the stunning work that you and others did is that it
:11:03. > :11:04.
:11:04. > :11:10.won a Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974. Others got the prize, but you
:11:10. > :11:15.did not. Correct. Does that rankle? No. Do you want to know why?
:11:15. > :11:19.think I ought to know why. First of all it was the very first time that
:11:19. > :11:29.a physics prize had gone to anything astronomical. There is no
:11:29. > :11:34.
:11:35. > :11:38.astronomy Nobel Prize. It was an incredibly important precedent. And
:11:38. > :11:42.I was incredibly proud that these pulsars were the thing that
:11:42. > :11:46.convinced the physicists that there was good physics in astronomy. So
:11:46. > :11:52.it opened a door which has been pushed on a good many times since.
:11:52. > :11:56.It raised the profile of astronomy within the physics community.
:11:56. > :12:01.that commentary is very selfless because you did not include any
:12:01. > :12:04.consideration of your own role. Another leading astronomer and
:12:04. > :12:09.astrophysicist, he seemed to think it was one of the great injustices
:12:09. > :12:13.that the Nobel committee had inflicted upon you. I wonder
:12:13. > :12:19.whether there was not a part of you that actually resented being
:12:19. > :12:24.written out of that particular script? It was a little bit
:12:24. > :12:29.difficult. At the time of the prize I had a small child about 18 months
:12:29. > :12:35.old and was trying to keep working. It was proving very difficult. In
:12:35. > :12:39.those days, mothers did not work. A bit of me said, yeah, men get
:12:39. > :12:42.prizes and young women look after babies. Actually I think it was not
:12:42. > :12:47.so much the fact that ours was a woman, it was the fact I was a
:12:47. > :12:51.student. They just did not know I existed, let alone what gender I
:12:51. > :12:57.was. I have discovered that even if you describe it as an injustice,
:12:58. > :13:01.and you can do incredibly well out of not getting an a ute -- a Nobel
:13:02. > :13:08.Prize. This is not just about gender issues, it is about the way
:13:08. > :13:17.research is done. Let me quote to you something that the guy who did
:13:17. > :13:20.get the price said: Suggesting that you, a research student, should
:13:20. > :13:25.have gotten the prize was like suggesting somebody in the Crows
:13:25. > :13:29.nest on a ship that is on a voyage of discovery who actually sees land
:13:29. > :13:35.first should somehow be rewarded for that. He said, the question is,
:13:35. > :13:41.who inspired the journey? There is a difference between skipper and
:13:41. > :13:44.crew. Do you buy that analysis? think that that skipper knew they
:13:44. > :13:52.were looking for new land. Housekeeper was not expecting to
:13:52. > :13:55.find anything like this. The analogy breaks down a bit. What is
:13:55. > :14:01.behind this is a different understanding about how science
:14:01. > :14:06.works, how science operates. My image, and I think the image today,
:14:06. > :14:10.is a group of people working together as a team. Somebody is the
:14:10. > :14:13.lead person, somebody takes the praise if things go well, takes the
:14:13. > :14:18.trouble is there is trouble, but there is a group of people working
:14:18. > :14:21.as a team together and each contributing from their strengths.
:14:21. > :14:28.The old model of science and the one that pertained won Nobel prizes
:14:28. > :14:32.were set up was that there was a boss man and it was a man and under
:14:32. > :14:37.this man were a whole load of very junior folk who were not expected
:14:37. > :14:47.to think or contribute, they just did what the boss man told them to
:14:47. > :14:53.Science is no longer that hierarchical. It may have been. I
:14:53. > :14:56.would argue that his is not now. It has changed a lot. We will talk
:14:56. > :15:01.about that more in a minute. I will come back to the discussion of
:15:01. > :15:06.religion and science. He said that a poor start did not tell us
:15:06. > :15:11.anything about the origin of the universe but how it worked. --
:15:11. > :15:16.pulsar. We had Richard Dawkins not that long ago. I am sure you are
:15:16. > :15:21.familiar with his work. In his book, he talked about evidence of
:15:21. > :15:26.evolution which, in his phrase, reveals a universe without design.
:15:26. > :15:33.Whether you believe that God created the world and the universe
:15:33. > :15:37.or not, do you see our universe as having a design? Only the design
:15:37. > :15:45.that nature, the laws of physics, have put on it. I do not see the
:15:46. > :15:52.hand of God in the universe. what is your God all about? I start
:15:52. > :15:57.with some of the -- negative points and moved on to positive points.
:15:57. > :16:02.The God that I envisage, not true of all Quakers, was not the prime
:16:02. > :16:08.creator. The God that I envisage is not in charge of the world. But I
:16:08. > :16:11.do still believe that there is a God, and he works three people, in
:16:11. > :16:19.films as the world through the way people behave and interact and
:16:19. > :16:29.react. It is a court of creativity, of inspiration, rather than a
:16:29. > :16:30.
:16:30. > :16:38.quarter of Prime creation. But the Let us go back to the research that
:16:38. > :16:45.got to enable price. As soon as it was over, he went to get married.
:16:45. > :16:52.And soon, you raise a child. Since, you said you worked part-time for
:16:52. > :16:58.the next 18 years. Yes. You are the -- one of the most successful situs
:16:58. > :17:04.in the land, and he went part-time. Looking back, does that seem like a
:17:04. > :17:09.questionable decision? Not at the time. At that time, married women
:17:09. > :17:13.were not expected to work, and mothers were not expect to work.
:17:13. > :17:17.You hear people on the radio telling you that if mothers wept,
:17:17. > :17:23.the children would be to link it. Male professors telling you that on
:17:23. > :17:30.the radio. Absolute rubbish. But that was what believed. And if a
:17:30. > :17:34.married woman worked, a man would not afford -- could not keep her.
:17:34. > :17:39.You were looking at why they were not women at the top table in
:17:39. > :17:47.science. You committed a lot of you like to that question, finding
:17:47. > :17:51.answers. When we look at your own career curve, maybe your decisions
:17:52. > :17:58.do not provide the model that you would like many young women to
:17:58. > :18:08.adopt. You are failing to notice the immense effort it took for me
:18:08. > :18:12.to keep working at all. It was very hairy, scary. If I had not had the
:18:12. > :18:22.discovery of course us behind me, I would not be here today. There was
:18:22. > :18:23.
:18:23. > :18:28.a time when... I was going to work. Regularly,... Since then, you have
:18:28. > :18:34.blazed a trail of women in places women have not been before. You
:18:34. > :18:40.were the first female at the head of the Institute of Physics. You
:18:40. > :18:46.were then the head of the astronomical Society. Have you
:18:46. > :18:53.faced hostility from many in your career? I have not faced real
:18:53. > :19:00.hostility or discrimination, but there is a lot, still, of
:19:00. > :19:03.unthinking us. This is in the UK. This program will go to many
:19:03. > :19:09.countries like South-East Asia, where it is perfectly normal for
:19:09. > :19:19.women to do physics, engineering, what have you. It is a cold Roar
:19:19. > :19:21.
:19:21. > :19:28.thing. -- colt rule. Why is that. It is something to do with cultural
:19:28. > :19:33.history. It may be something to do with defensiveness by the males. In
:19:33. > :19:37.South-East Asia, the government has seen that they made all the
:19:37. > :19:40.scientific and engineering talent they have. They make sure it is
:19:41. > :19:47.perfectly OK for women to do science and engineering. And it
:19:47. > :19:50.shows. It is not just the Higher Studies been the subject, it is
:19:50. > :19:57.finding professional careers in it. One of the working groups who were
:19:57. > :20:04.involved in, in Scotland, of all the females who studied science and
:20:04. > :20:11.into professionals -- professions using what they had learnt. For men,
:20:11. > :20:20.it is around a half. Had the EU fix that? You are saying, how do we
:20:20. > :20:28.change society and culture? There are a number of ways you can do it.
:20:28. > :20:34.Being a role model is an important one. You can do it through, for
:20:35. > :20:39.instance, paying better, or alarming special recruitment to
:20:39. > :20:43.counteract historical imbalances. There are many things he can do.
:20:43. > :20:49.The most important one is to make sure the climate in an organisation
:20:49. > :20:59.is open to women. Everything you talked about his cultural, and
:20:59. > :21:01.
:21:01. > :21:07.social. Yes. What if, Larry Summers, expressed something at the time
:21:07. > :21:12.this was hugely controversial. He said, that maybe biology was
:21:13. > :21:18.involved, between men in women, there is a different availability
:21:18. > :21:24.of aptitude at you high and when it comes to science. Do you accept
:21:24. > :21:30.that as a biological possibility? There is no evidence for it. Look
:21:30. > :21:37.again at South-East Asia. More than 50% of physics, engineering are
:21:37. > :21:44.female. He is confusing nurture and nature. He is confusing the effects
:21:44. > :21:48.of a culture, a sociology. He is looking at some biological studies.
:21:48. > :21:55.I quote one more psychologist. He has written and what a lot of what
:21:55. > :21:59.he calls, the extreme male brain. There is something about most bail
:21:59. > :22:08.brings that is into system might have -- system might think then
:22:08. > :22:15.female brains. Females system lies in a different way. The network
:22:15. > :22:21.different league. It is less linear. Your message to young women around
:22:21. > :22:28.the world is, do not believe that there is anything deterministic
:22:28. > :22:33.about whether or you can make a career in science. There is nothing
:22:33. > :22:39.stopping you. Yes. If you want to do it and you are good at it, you
:22:39. > :22:49.can do it. Before we end, I want your thoughts on a huge scientific
:22:49. > :22:49.
:22:49. > :22:55.issue. There is a scientific desire to find a fury of for everything. -
:22:55. > :22:59.- fury. Trying to understand the origin of the universe. Will we get
:22:59. > :23:06.to a point where we understand the science of everything? The
:23:06. > :23:10.universe? History suggests not. Every time you find and also to a
:23:10. > :23:17.question, you also find a lot more questions. It is diverging, not
:23:17. > :23:22.converging. As we see these diverging ideas developed, we are
:23:22. > :23:29.going to jettison what we think about the universe. When we get new
:23:29. > :23:35.series coming in, the old theories are tactfully refrained. With Isaac
:23:35. > :23:40.Newton and consign, Newton's staff is right in its context but
:23:40. > :23:47.Einstein showed that this lovely horse and cart is much -- part of a
:23:47. > :23:52.bigger picture. The horse and cart are valid in their peace. But there
:23:52. > :23:58.is surrounding staff where things are slightly different. We do not
:23:58. > :24:03.prove there is something wrong. We prove that it has limited