Photograph portrait of Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Portrait photograph of Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell by Robert Taylor, 2006. Monochrome photograph showing Burnell in quarter portrait behind a covered surface wearing a pale jumper and glasses against a mid-grey background. With accompanying plaque.

One of six photograph portraits of Women of Outstanding Achievement in Physics. Each of the women were chosen by the UKRC (UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology) as leaders in their scientific field. Their portraits were commissioned from Robert Taylor between the years 2006-2011 as part of an annual project to capture and celebrate ‘Women of Outstanding Achievement in SET’, aiming to inspire the next generation and increase the proportion of women in science, engineering and technology professions. Bell Burnell is an astrophysicist who co-discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. In 2018, she was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, from which she gave the £2.3 million prize money to help female, minority, and refugee students seeking to become physics researchers.

Taylor was commissioned to photograph the chosen women, and also conducted short interviews, which were published in an accompanying booklet. These six portraits of physicists were donated to the Institute of Physics where they hung in a meeting room in their premises in Portland Place until November 2018, when they were offered as a gift to the Science Museum.