In addition to her work in astronomy, she contributed to the field of climate history, with studies of ancient Egypt.
[2][3] Her dissertation, "A study of Doppler and damping effects in the solar atmosphere", was supervised by Donald Menzel,[4] and won the Caroline Wilby Prize in 1951.
[5] Her younger brother George Irving Bell Jr. was a biophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
[6] Bell was said to have a sharp and curious mind, with a kind heart and cheerful disposition, especially towards her niece, Carolyn S.
[14] Bell also researched and wrote on the climate history of ancient Egypt;[15][16] she is credited with being the first to explore climate change as a cause of famine and civil breakdown known as "The First Dark Age in Egypt", using records of the Nile's annual flood levels.