 I'm Jocelyn Bell-Bernel, and I'm the current President of the Institute of Physics for UK and Ireland. I recognise that the Institute without the President is doing quality work, superb stuff, and that I trust will continue to roll on. My particular interests, I'm keen that we recognise excellence in physics at all levels, all the way from senior school kids to senior academics. I'm also keen that, and this is overambitious for a two-year term, but I'm keen that we move towards having a public that's appreciative of and supportive of physics. And that means good outreach and good education, so that school education, for instance, shouldn't just be for the people who'd be professional physicists, but should also help generate, help produce a public that's knowledgeable about science and comfortable with science. My third ambition, and I think I do that just by being me, is to encourage women in physics, get more, support those that are already in the field. Discovering the first pulsar was actually worrying. It was such an unexpected signal of a kind totally unexpected that my supervisor particularly rightly thought there's something wrong with the equipment. I had a hunch that actually it was some kind of star, although I couldn't articulate that hunch. You know how you work with pieces of equipment, you get a feeling for how it operates and what its weak points are. But anyway, we set out on a programme to try and find what was wrong, and I had been responsible for the wiring of that radio telescope, and I was really worried that I had literally got some wires crossed, and this was what was producing this funny signal. So we spent a month checking things out, gradually moving our sites further and further out. Was it a fault with my equipment? No. Was it a fault common to the whole observatory? No. Was it a fault common to our patch of the globe? No. Gradually working out and out and out. And at the end of that month I actually discovered the second one, and that was brilliant timing, partly because we didn't quite know what to do next with the first one, but secondly because discovering a second one, very, very similar but not identical and in a different part of the sky, and then knowing that it wasn't a fault with the equipment, it wasn't a fault with the observatory, etc. That was really sweet because that shows that you've stumbled on a new kind of stellar population. Dear knows what it was, but it's a new kind of stellar population and we find the tip of the iceberg. And a month later I find another tomb, so I find the first four on that. Real fun. Yes, it was an important experience. The particularly memorable bit was finding the second one. And once you start seeing things you begin to see more, so I saw the third and fourth quite quickly. Yes, it was a very interesting experience. Being interviewed following the discovery by Press was very interesting. This was the late 1960s and the Press had no idea how to handle a young woman scientist. Young women were page three material. They weren't scientists. So I got asked questions like what were my vital statistics, how tall was I? Was I brunet or blonde? Was I taller than Princess Margaret or not so tall? I found that very difficult to handle. How did you handle it? Well I forgot my vital statistics and I didn't know how tall I was and I wasn't going to say how many boyfriends I had at once and I was generally not very cooperative. I resisted being outright rude with a sharp tongue because I reckoned the lab probably needed the publicity. But I did not like the way they were approaching me. I was a sex thing, not a scientist. I think today women are treated much better although it's still not parity. For instance a woman appears on a stage platform, something like that. There'll be comments about how she's dressed as well as what she's saying or doing or has done. A man wouldn't get those same comments about how they're dressed. So it's still not true equality which is interesting to observe but it's a lot better. For women physicists, particularly younger women thinking of physics, I'd say go for it. It's a fantastic subject. It can lead to all sorts of things. Think hard about what you want to do and having decided stick to your guns. Don't give up too easily. Be prepared to take risks. You'll probably surprise yourself.