UK physicist donates 2.2 million prize to boost diversity
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Posted on September 20, 2018
One of Britain's leading astrophysicists is donating her 2.2 million from a major science prize to encourage diversity in physics. This news as a sign of rising positivity in the fields of science and education, documenting the growth of life-supporting, evolutionary trends.
The money will go to the Institute of Physics to fund graduate scholarships for people from under-represented groups, which include 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.”
Bell Burnell has won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 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.
