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. She has served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute of Physics, and has campaigned to improve the status and number of women in professional and academic posts in the fields of physics and astronomy.