October 6, 2008 | 27 comments

No Nobel for You: Top 10 Nobel Snubs

As the 2008 laureates are announced, SciAm looks back at some of Nobel history's also-rans

By Erica Westly

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6.) Jocelyn Bell Burnell--frozen out of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of pulsars No Nobel for You: Top 10 Nobel Snubs :: As the 2008 laureates are announced, SciAm looks

6.) Jocelyn Bell Burnell--frozen out of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of pulsarsAs a graduate student under Antony Hewish at the University of Cambridge, Burnell detected the first pulsars. She published her results with Hewish in Nature in 1968, and, in 1973, she and Hewish shared the prestigious Franklin Institute's Michelson Medal. But when the Nobel committee awarded Hewish and colleague Martin Ryle with the physics prize the next year--the first Nobel won by astronomers, according to the American Institute of Physics--Burnell was not included. Many prominent astronomers expressed outrage, whereas others argued that she only collected data for Hewish to interpret. Burnell never contested the omission, but most reports indicate she contributed more than just the initial observations.

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