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IOP’s Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund receives in-memory donation

1 October 2024

Family of late physicist Jim Noland take the lead from Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell and will help future scholars.


The IOP fund helping students from underrepresented backgrounds to study for physics doctorates has received a generous in-memory donation.

The family of the late physicist Jim Noland, who passed away last year, have chosen to make the donation to the Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund (BBGSF) – the fund made possible by Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

Dame Jocelyn’s gifting of her £2.3m Breakthrough Prize in 2019 for the discovery of pulsars enabled the IOP to set up the innovative fund, offering scholarships each year to increase diversity in physics.

Jim Noland was born in Oklahoma in 1936 and graduated with a physics degree from Oklahoma State University in 1964 but it was only by receiving a small veteran’s allowance from the US navy that Jim was able to study at university.

After graduating, he pursued a successful career in satellite engineering, which took him, via Germany, to the UK. Jim always tried to keep abreast of the latest developments in physics research, and was inspired by the possibility of discovering something new about our universe.

He was passionate about this research and his particular interest was astrophysics, tying in with Dame Jocelyn’s area of expertise. Dame Jocelyn hoped that her donation would encourage similar gestures, so this latest gift is welcomed by the IOP.

The BBGSF recently celebrated its fifth anniversary with a day of celebration at Caledonian Road and it has now given away more than £1m in scholarships.

The fund is now open for applications.