The London Literary Festival begins today and runs for a fortnight with events all over London, headlined by huge names including Philip Pullman, Alexander McCall Smith and Alan Hollinghurst. Fascinating talks abound on topics including architecture, history and culture, but while pure science is a little thin on the ground, there are gems to be had, the highlight of which is a talk by Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

Former (and current interim, following the death of the incumbent) president of the Institute of Physics, Dame Bell Burnell came to prominence in 1968 when, as a postgraduate student, she discovered the first radio pulsars which led to the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics for her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish. Since then, she has developed a career as one of the most prominent British astrophysicists, became President of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2002 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004. Now part retired, she is currently a visiting lecturer at the University of Oxford.

You can hear Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell speak as part of the Literary Festival’s Great Thinkers series, in which she explores how humanity is directly linked to the cosmos, with the carbon, iron and calcium in our bodies originally coming from the stars.

Date: Tuesday 12 July 2011 – 19:45

Tickets: From £10; book in advance.