Born in Northern Ireland near Armagh Observatory, Bell Burnell was encouraged by the staff there when they found she was interested in astronomy. She went on to earn a B.Sc. degree in 1965 at the University of Glasgow. Later that year she began to work on her Ph.D. under the supervision of Antony Hewish at Cambridge University. They constructed a new kind of radio telescope designed to track quasars, powerful sources of radio energy extremely far from the Earth. The telescope had the ability to record rapid variations in the strength of the quasars' emissions.

In August 1967 Bell Burnell was working out problems with the new telescope when she picked up strange signals. At first Hewish thought they were products of local ham radio operators or electrical interference. The signals disappeared and reappeared until November, when Bell Burnell used a high-speed recorder to monitor them. The device...