“If it wasn't for the stars, we would not be here.” — Jocelyn Bell Burnell Quote

If it wasn't for the stars, we would not be here.

As observatory architect, my dad was partly concerned with the maintenance of them all. I used to go with him on site visits quite often, from age 7 or 8. I have memories of crawling through the rafters of the old building, trying to find where the leak in the roof was.

In the field of astronomy in the mid-'60s, quasars were very sexy objects - gigantic, star-like masses about which little was known. I was a graduate research student at Cambridge working towards my Ph.D. and chose quasars as the subject for my thesis. Part of my project involved surveying the sky for them using a radio telescope.

Arguably, my student status and perhaps my gender were also my downfall with respect to the Nobel Prize, which was awarded to Professor Antony Hewish and Professor Martin Ryle. At the time, science was still perceived as being carried out by distinguished men.

There are a lot of famous people who started out with us and became stars and I wouldn't swap my life with theirs for one second.

I hear Billie described as one of the biggest stars in the world and that's very hard for me to process.

When you watch a film like 'Warning,' you would realize that it can't be made with stars.

All actors may not be stars, but all stars are actors, and I can vouch for that.

Fame should be left to the film stars.