In 1967 a graduate intern from Cambridge working towards her PHD helped discover one of the major break throughs in our understanding of science and the universe. Her name was Jocelyn Bell and what she helped discover was something we now call Pulsars.  Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars that emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation. Neutron stars are very dense objects – collapsed stars infact. They emit radiation that can be observed when they point to earth as a beam of emissions.  Pulsars act like lighthouses.  The faster they spin the greater the frequency or the pulse radiation we receive.

I wont go into the scientific details of why this was so significant.  Instead, I will give you three things that happened as a result of this discovery:

1. It helped legitimise the ideas of a weird young scientist called Stephen Hawking.  Hawking is now among the most famous living scientists. Among Hawking’s key theories was the concept of black holes.  A simplistic description of a black hole being a star that has collapsed to such an extent and is so dense that even light cannot escape. The findings on Pulsars legitimised the idea of Neutron stars.  A black hole is one step away from a Neutron star. Hawking became believable to many who previously saw him as a nut.
2. It legitimised some of Einstein’s theories.  It is difficult to explain quite how much of a genius Einstein was – given that he operated at a time without the level of computing or technical equipment that now exists. Many of Einstein’s theories could not be researched when he was alive. Pulsar’s allowed some of Einstein’s theories to be put to the test.
3. It got scientists to think differently about space and the universe.  The logic of the universe appeared to work fine at the time and the knowledge that existed all worked to the theory that we had for space and the universe – QED. Scientists had therefore got themselves quite blocked because they thought they knew how the universe worked. The discovery of Pulsars confounded popular theory.  If you accept Pulsars you have to think differently about the universe.

Eventually, there was a Nobel Prize awarded for the discovery of Pulsars. Jocelyn Bell did not get it.  It went to her boss when she was an intern – Prof Anthony Hewish.  The logic being that he had started the experiment that led to the discovery of Pulsars.  As he described it: he was the captain of the ship.  As he explained when he took the Nobel Prize: why should the person who spys land from the crows nest be recognised over the ship’s captain?

The presumption Hewlish would propogate is that his experiment – which was not actually looking for Pulsars – would have eventually revealed Pulsars.  If not Jocelyn Bell – then somone else would have spotted them.

It’s a simple argument.  It seems true. Yet it plays down the belief and ability to have the courage and tenacity to see that the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes –  against the prevailing pressure that to disagree is showing your stupidity or naivety. You will no doubt remember the Hans Christian Andersen story about an emperor who was duped by 2 tailors that they had a cloth so fine that it was invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. In fact, what they sold him was a lie that wasn’t there, but everybody went along with it not wishing to appear stupid.  The conspiracy of stupid silence is broken by a child who cries out “But he isn’t wearing any clothes”.  It is at this point, everybody including the Emperor realises how stupid they have been.

There had been many similar experiments that had been carried out before and nobody had spotted Pulsars.  They liked the way the universe was dressed and couldn’t see they the truth when it appeared.  Consider also what happened when Jocelyn Bell first pointed out the weird findings to Hewlish. Hewlish had an established view of what the universe was about.  So when Bell showed her findings he rejected them several times.  Perhaps it was interference from a radio station, perhaps the reader was not working, perhaps …perhaps…perhaps.  Bell had to push back several times.  She did that by seeking new data and new perspectives to get better understanding. The experiment left to run its course would never have revealed her findings. Eventually, Hewlish and Bell went to another radio telescope to seek a second point of proof.  If the same findings appeared for the same piece of space it meant that it wasn’t a fault in the equipment.  It meant what Bell saw in the data was true.  It was the case. Hewlish accepted that there was a regular signal coming to earth from deep in the universe.

Hewlish then took responsibility for the discovery and cut Bell out of his conversations.  He sought other senior scientist views on what it might mean. One advised him to check whether the signal was on many frequencies or on just one.  If on just one the logic was that it was deliberate and controlled – manufactured in fact.  They checked. It was on one frequency. At this point panic arose.  The conclusion they reached was a manufactured signal from space meant aliens were making it.  There was pressure on Hewlish not to publish, but to burn the findings. Somebody from Earth would ultimately send  a signal back.  Perhaps an alien race was waiting for just such a thing to find a planet worth invading.

Bell eventually discovered this aliens thesis.  Again she set out to disprove it by finding other Pulsars.  The issue before wasn’t that Pulsars were not there – it was that people and their view of the universe had trained their eyes not to see them. Bell relooked through lots of previous data and she found more Pulsars.   At which point the little green men theory disappears in a puff of logic.  The odds on two sets of alien races sending out signals from completely different parts of the universe was highly unlikely.

The results were published.  The perspective of space and the universe changed.  So who should be credited with the discovery of Pulsars – the person who sails the ship or the person who can see the islands that everybody else tells you are not there?

There are several reasons why Jocelyn Bell was not recognised for the Nobel Prize and most of them are not scientific. Consider these:

• She was young and not yet a professor.  Senior people made breakthroughs not juniors in people’s minds.
• She was a woman.  More than that she was a woman physicist. Women weren’t regarded as proper scientists and certainly not proper physicists.
• She was just lucky.  It was not an original piece or research or theory she had set out to test.

There is a prevailing thought in all of this that also assumes norms and rules of how things happen.  Science is seen as  a process of experimentation to a purpose – rather than a voyage of discovery. The truth of innovation in Science and busines is the opposite.  It is riddled with serendiptous discoveries or applications. They just tend to be written up afterwards as taking a deep insight, turning it into a  eureka moment and a planned path to innovation.

Penecillin is among one of the most famous – coming from a bit of mould in a petris dish. Attributed to Alexander Fleming in 1928 – who won the Nobel Prize – it is another instance where reputation gets recognition. A published reference to what is now known as the concept of penecillin was documented by Ernest Duchesnet in an 1897 paper. It was was not accepted because of his youth. In March 2000, doctors in San José, Costa Rica, published the manuscripts of a Costa Rican scientist and medical doctor Clodomiro (Clorito) Picado Twight (1887–1944). Picado’s observations on actions of fungi of the genus Penicillium occurred between 1915 and 1927. Picado reported his discovery to the Paris Academy of Sciences, but did not patent it.  Joseph Lister was experimenting with penicillum in 1871. He found that it weakened the microbes. He, however, dismissed the fungi and looked to see it as an anomoly.

It is too easy to dismiss Jocelyn Bell’s role as one of luck – rather that the skill to see differently through the blanket of believing you know how things work.  The ability to remain open minded in seeing the insight for what it might be is the most remarkable of gifts – and rare too. It requires vision – but also passion and courage to get heard. The ability to resist the wisdom of her elders and wisers who sort to dismiss what she found, especially in the late 1960s, because it contradicted known rules.

When interviewed about what she saw the purpose of science to be, Jocelyn Bell, revealed her true wisdom. She said that she saw the purpose of science and a good scientist was to seek to gain greater understanding and not the truth. As she went on to say. If you seek to find truth, you believe that there is an ultimate answer.  Once you have that perspective your mind is closed to seeing new possibilities.

In the lyrics of Johnny Nash.  “There are more questions than answers.  And the more I find out the less I know”.  I share Jocelyn Bell’s perspective on this. Discovery is what makes the universe so exciting. Many never explore.  Of those who explore many cannot see what is there.  Of those who can see what is there many do not have the courage to remain a child inside and say what they see “But, he’s not wearing any clothes“.