But at least in the case of Jocelyn Bell Burnell, even though she put in a lot of the legwork, it was her supervisors who did much of the theoretical work to explain the discovery. Also of note is that she agreed with the Nobel committee decision. From her Wikipedia page:
"First, demarcation disputes between supervisor and student are always difficult, probably impossible to resolve. Secondly, it is the supervisor who has the final responsibility for the success or failure of the project. We hear of cases where a supervisor blames his student for a failure, but we know that it is largely the fault of the supervisor. It seems only fair to me that he should benefit from the successes, too. Thirdly, I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them. Finally, I am not myself upset about it – after all, I am in good company, am I not!"
Yes, (1) is true even in this case. It’s not that her supervisors didn’t deserve to share in the prize, it’s that she should not have been excluded.
I know of her statements about the incident. I think she’s being modest, and I disagree with her idea that awarding the Prize to someone who happened to be a student during the time of discovery would somehow demean the Prize. Her work was as crucial as theirs. It wasn’t just “legwork”, she discovered the regular signals and recognized them as something new and important.
"First, demarcation disputes between supervisor and student are always difficult, probably impossible to resolve. Secondly, it is the supervisor who has the final responsibility for the success or failure of the project. We hear of cases where a supervisor blames his student for a failure, but we know that it is largely the fault of the supervisor. It seems only fair to me that he should benefit from the successes, too. Thirdly, I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them. Finally, I am not myself upset about it – after all, I am in good company, am I not!"