LONDON (AP) - One of Britain’s leading astrophysicists is donating her $3 million purse from a major science prize to encourage diversity in physics.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell says the money will go to the Institute of Physics to fund graduate scholarships for people from under-represented groups - women, members of ethnic minorities and refugees.
She told the BBC that people from minority groups bring “a fresh angle on things and that is often a very productive thing. A lot of breakthroughs, she added, “come from left field.”
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Bell Burnell won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics on Thursday for her role in discovering radio pulsars. The discovery of the rotating neutron stars won a Nobel Prize for physics in 1974, but two of Bell Burnell’s male colleagues were named the winners.
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