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“One of the greatest astronomical discoveries of the 20th century”
source was soon determined to be a pulsar: a rapidly spinning neu- tron star which emits an intense beam of electromagnetic radiation. Bell’s supervisor, Hewish, a well-established astronomer who had planned the experiment and had a major role in explaining the observation, was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics—the first Nobel prize awarded in recognition of astronomical research—for his role in the discovery, sharing the honour with Bell’s other super- visor, Martin Ryle. Despite the fact that Bell was the first to notice the stellar radio source, however, she was not formally acknowledged, and Hewish defended the Nobel decision, calling Bell’s contribution “useful” but “not creative”. It was, and still is, seen by many as one of the greatest injustices in the history of the prize. Bell remained remarkably magnanimous, even joking when she attended the prize ceremony as the guest of another astronomer, Joseph Taylor Jr, in 1993 that she “did get to go in the end” (Harg- ittai, p. 130). Bell later explained that, “at that time there was still around the picture that science was done by great men (and they were men). These great men had under them a group of assistants, who were much more lowly and much less intelligent, and were not expected to think, they just carried out the great man’s instructions . . . What has happened in the last 30 years is that we’ve come to understand that science is much more a team effort, with lots of people contributing ideas and suggestions” (ibid., p. 72). Proof of this change in perspective arose in September 2018, when Bell (now Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell) won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics both for her discovery of pulsars and for her inspiring leadership over the past five dec- ades. She donated the entirety of the £2.3 million prize money to initiatives which support women, ethnic minority, and refugee stu- dents in the study of physics. Notably rare: Copac locates just one copy of this offprint, in the collections of the Royal Society; none traced on OCLC. In commerce, two copies of the issue of Nature in which the article appears have been traced at auction (Bonhams 2010), but none of the offprint. Hargittai, Magdolna, Women Scientists: Reflections, Challenges, and Breaking Boundaries , Oxford University Press, 2015. £7,500 [131009]
22 BELL, Jocelyn; A. Hewish; J. D. H. Pilkington; P. F. Scott; R. A. Collins. “ Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source.” [Offprint from:] Nature , Vol. 217, No. 5130, pp. 709–713, February 24, 1968. London: Macmillan, 1968 Quarto (260 × 210 mm). Original blue printed stiff wrappers. Bound eleventh with 18 other offprints and separate publications relating to pulsars and ra- dio astronomy in contemporary red cloth, spine lettered “Radio Astronomy XVIII” in gilt, with a 2 page typed index loosely inserted. With the library stamps of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, Cambridge to sever- al of the works; the occasional pencil and ink annotations noting the same provenance. Spine and inner edges of boards faintly sunned, a few stab holes and rust marks from previous staples visible at gutters of publications, one closed tear. All in fine or near-fine condition. first edition, the extremely rare offprint of the landmark paper which announced the discovery of pulsars, co-authored by British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell, her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, and three others; with meaningful provenance, from the library of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, where the research leading to this discovery was carried out. This ground-breaking paper documented “one of the greatest as- tronomical discoveries of the 20th century” (Royal Society): in 1967 Bell (b. 1943), while a doctoral student at Cambridge University, made her discovery using a telescope that she and Hewish had origi- nally built to study the recently detected star-like quasars. Over time she noted a regular signal, unlike that produced by stars, galaxies, and solar wind, that pulsed approximately once every 1.3 seconds; they nicknamed the signal LGM–1 for “Little Green Man 1”, a hu- morous nod to the quickly-dismissed thought that they might have recorded extraterrestrial contact. Bell and Hewish announced their findings in the present paper, despite not having yet determined the nature of the source, and it immediately prompted speculation. The
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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