Two Generations on Women in Science Day: Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Valerie Domcke

“Because I was a girl, I was not expected to do science. I was expected to learn cookery and needlework”, says the woman who discovered radio pulsars and changed the way we look at the universe, astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell (Royal Society, Royal Society of Edinburgh).

She is one of the two interviewees that we brought together on today’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Valérie Domcke (Die Junge Akademie), theoretical physicist and cosmologist who works at CERN and was awarded the L’Oréal-Unesco “Génération Jeune Chercheuse” Prize as a young post-doc, provides us the perspective of a young researcher navigating through today’s scientific system.

We invite you to watch the two interviews for a reflection on the disparities and commonalities of being a woman in science across different decades in physics. Happy Women in Science Day!