The real story behind the discovery of pulsars by astronomer Jocelyn Bell
MAKING
with JOCELYN BELL BURNELL
There is no doubt that Carl Sagan borrowed a lot from science history
in writing his novel Contact.
Science history! you say. Have we been contacted by aliens and traveling
through worm holes? No, but the first part of the story is so similar to
the real life story of Jocelyn Bell who discovered pulsars
in 1967, some of the opening scenes from the movie could have been taken
from the TV documentary about Bell.
True, the movie Contact features the giant dish antennae radio
telescopes and not the type (a field of wires) built by Jocelyn and fellow
students from a design by Antony Hewish, her advisor. And the location was
switched from Cambridge, England to the deserts of Socorro,
New Mexico.
Nevertheless, there is Jody
Foster on screen analyzing what Jocelyn called "bits of scruff"
- very faint signals which appeared on her print out frequently, and more
important, in regular cycles (every 1.337 seconds with a duration of 0.3
sec.)
What was the source of these signals? Was it an orbiting satellite? Radar?
Or possibly French TV signals bouncing across the English Channel? The signals
occurred 4 minutes earlier each evening just like the stars rising in the
sky. With the earthly possibilites ruled out, Hewish even considered "little
green men" from outer space who were trying to reach us by radio. The
press went wild.
Little
Green Men comic 
Bell is 1 of 2 women full professors of Astronomy in England
The men scientists were stumped, but not Jocelyn Bell. She clearly had a
hunch about the nature of this phenomenon. In her logbook, she wrote down
the words "belisha beacon." A belisha beacon is a flashing signal,
like one produced by a lighthouse, to warn pedestrians crossing streets
in England. And she was exactly right. A pulsar is a condensed star created
during a super nova explosion. The electrons are absorbed by the protons
under extreme pressure. The star becomes one big atom with a mass greater
than our sun.
Without electrons, the atoms collapse into a much smaller area (a few miles).
The angular momentun, though, has to be conserved. So the mass spins at
a much faster rate, as much as several times a second. As the pulsar spins,
trapped charged particles at the magnetic poles generate beams of radio
waves in the direction of the magnetic field. Over the next 3 months, Bell
discovered 3 more pulsars. She and Hewish published her discovery of pulsars
on February 26, 1968 in the science journal Nature.
Lighthouse Beacon 
Bell was born in Belfast, Ireland. Perhaps the luck of the Irish brought
her to this stellar event in the history of astronomy. Growing up in rural
county Armagh, she was intrigued with her father's books on astronomy. He
was an architect, and he took her along when he built an extension on the
Armagh Observatory. The staff was inpressed with her intelligent questions,
and they suggested that she consider a career in astronomy.
When she failed to pass an exam required to go on to a college prep program
in secondary school, her parents decided to send her to a boarding school
in England. Her family are Quakers, and they believe wholeheartedly in equal
education for women. At the Mount School, a Quaker school, Jocelyn excelled
and distinguished herself as a well-rounded student. She founded the school's
archaeology club and organized digs; she was stage manager in a number of
school drama productions, and she was the captain of the hockey team.
Super Nova Remnant Puppis A (S. Snowden, R.Petre,C. Becker, NASA)
Here's where Sagan's book and the movie veer off in a direction away from
reality. Jodie Foster's character, Ellie Arroway, is protrayed as a loner
who can't make long-lasting relationships with men. She doesn't seem to
have any friendships with other women either. (This is strange in a field
where there are a number of women working). Flashbacks show Jodie in a one
night stand, a seemingly passionless sexual encounter with Matthew McConaughey,
her romantic interest in the film.
This is exactly the opposite of Jocelyn Bell who was very socially active
throughout prep school and college. She was the only woman physics student
in her undergraduate classes, but she bore the teasing she sometimes got
from the men students with good humor. In 1965, she was awarded a B.S. degree
in physics from the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
Four Views of the Pulsar Powered Crab Nebula
(Photo by: J.Hester, P.Snowden, NASA)
The Crab Nebula is what is left of a super nova explosion in AD 1054
Like a number of scientist authors in recent years, Carl Sagan decided to
make a woman his main character. Book publishers usually advise these neophyte
authors that they will sell more books if a woman is the main character
because it is mainly women who buy novels these days. This presents a problem
for men scientists because they understand very little about the psychology
of women generally, much less what drives women scientists.
The irony is that the men have avoided women scientists for most of their
professional lives. How many women astronomers did Sagan ever work with
professionally? Did he have a woman thesis advisor? A woman physics instructor?
A woman math instructor? Did he ever have a woman lab partner in physics?
Did he raise any daughters? There have been no women astronomers on the
governing board of the Planetary Society,
an organization started by Sagan to promote public participation in space
science. These male novelists simply cannot write the interior dialogs and
the emotional lives of young and gifted women in science.
What Sagan does give his readers and film fans is a negative stereotype
of women scientists. Jody Foster's character is portrayed as a loser with
an unhappy home life and all kinds of sexual and psychological hang-ups.
She doesn't have a boyfriend, therefore she must be unhappy. She solves
complex math problems, therefore she must be cold and calculating. In Sagan's
world, the heroine's relationship with her father is always the key to her
problems. Why is mom missing and so unimportant? Maybe it's because these
male writers cannot write the mother/daughter relationship. Novels like
Contact keep reinforcing the stereotypes, and millions of people
read them and then see the movie.
Jodie Foster as Ellie Arroway
Women astronomers and physicists have to live with the consequences of these
stereotypes. For example, Jocelyn Bell at the time of her discovery was
probed by the press with questions like: was she taller than Princess Margaret
and how many boyfriends did she have at a time? Shortly after obtaining
her PhD, she got married to a young fellow working in the British Civil
service. In 1973, she gave birth to their first child. She went back to
work eventhough it was difficult to combine their respective careers. She
had to change her job frequently when her husband was re-assigned to a new
location. They divorced in 1989. Currently, Bell-Burnell is chairperson
of the physics department at the Open University.
It is interesting that Sagan and the other novelists don't write a story
about divorce among scientists and show the difficulties of juggling two
careers and family life. We don't know what happens to the heroine played
by Jody Foster and Matthew McConaughey. They drive off together into the
sunset. Now that Jody has "visited" another civilization on the
other side of the universe via worm hole, she feels "connected,"
and she is ready to make a commitment. Is this Sagan's version of psychological
growth?
NASA Artist's rendering of an Accretion Disk surrounding a
Neutron Star or a Black Hole with a Hot Star nearby.
The action of the film Contact focuses on the young woman's attempt
to maintain control over her discovery and what should be her project.
The villain of the novel is the project manager (played by Tom Skerritt)
who is competing with her for control. Her speech to the committee is Foster's
strongest moment in the film.
Jocelyn Bell in 1967 and Jodie Foster as Arroway
Bell-Burnell was not able to impress the Nobel committee as effectively.
In 1974, they awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Antony Hewish and Sir
Martin Ryle (leader of the Cambridge radio astronomy group). They were the
first astronomers to win a Nobel Prize. Bell-Burnell was not included even
though she played the crucial role in discovering pulsars. When interviewed,
she was very gracious in allowing that, after all, Hewish was the senior
investigator under whose direction she was working at the time. Many in
the scientific community felt Hewish had "pinched" the prize in
the words of astronomer Fred Hoyle.
Back in Hollywood, Jody Foster has also been passed over for the best actress
nomination for the Academy Awards. Why would Academy members ignore her
acting performance and nominate Kate Winslet, the star in Titanic? Perhaps
because her character was not someone the audience could root for. If instead,
the film had told the Jocelyn Bell story, it might have been different.
It might have re-energized a floundering feminist movement.
by Allison Nies Copyright 1998
