Discovery of First Pulsar

Date: November 28, 1967 • Location: Rome, Italy

Jocelyn Bell Burnell noticed a "bit of scruff" in data from a radio telescope, which turned out to be from PSR B1919+21, the first discovered pulsar.

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a Northern Irish astrophysicist and radio astronomer who, while conducting research for her doctorate in 1967, discovered the first known pulsar. This discovery was recognized by the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974, though she was not among its recipients.