Jocelyn Bell Burnell at PhysCon 2012.
Dame Commander of the Order of the Britist Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society. How do you top that?
She achieved these awards as an astronomer and discoverer of the pulsar, a superdense neutron star spinning fast. Think of an object the size of the sun, but only about 10 miles across. In the right orientation with respect to Earth, it emits periodic pulses of electromagnetic radiation, and 45 years ago Dr. Bell-Burnell discovered radio pulses from these exotic denizens of the cosmic menagerie with the radio telescope she helped build in the Australian outback.
She gave a talk on apocalypticism and the the impending Mayan 2012 doomsday event - the world's going to end next month, right, according to the ancient Mayans? No! And Jocelyn Bell Burnell shows why. It's actually pretty straightforward science, if you care to learn a bit of astronomy.