Jodrell Bank has been identified as a prime contender to win World Heritage Site status under new rules designed to recognise the importance of scientific installations.

Changes to the guidelines on how World Heritage Sites should be selected are being drawn up and will be debated in the summer. The rules, agreed in principle at a conference in London this week, will allow scientific centres such as Jodrell Bank to line up alongside the Egyptian Pyramids and the Great Barrier Reef.

World Heritage status has been reserved until now for human structures with a long history, such as the Taj Mahal, or important natural features such as the Galápagos Islands. The guidelines, however, preclude many of the locations that have proved pivotal to scientific research in the past 50 to 100 years. Officials hope that by drawing up fresh guidelines they can recognise more recent scientific centres that have played important roles in research and discovery.

Jodrell Bank, which is part of the Universty of Manchester, is regarded as a technological and cultural landmark behind a series of important discoveries in astronomy. It came to prominence in 1957 when it tracked the Sputnik carrier rocket and for years afterwards it was Britain’s only early-detection system for ballistic missile attacks.

Since it was established as an observatory in 1945 it has been credited with the discovery of quasars – halos of matter around supermassive black holes – and gravitational lenses, which assist in identifying planets and far distant stars. It led research into pulsars – the city-sized remains of dead stars – and in 2006 scientists using the observatory announced that they had proved Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with 99.95 per cent certainty.

The experts meeting to debate the Unesco World Heritage Convention proposals were hosted by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The final decision will be taken by the World Heritage Committee in Quebec in July.

Jodrell Bank was one of only two scientific installations cited at the meeting this week as being of the type of scientific installation that would be important enough to qualify. The other was Cern, the European laboratory for particle physics on the Franco-Swiss border.

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich is one of the few scientific centres included among the 851 existing World Heritage Sites recognising places of outstanding natural or cultural importance. Similarly, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, has been made a World Heritage Site, but neither achieved the status because of its scientific achievements alone.

Christopher Young, head of world heritage for English Heritage, which advises the Government on the suitability of sites, said: “The World Heritage Convention is about cultural heritage and science is one very important part of that. The sort of place we might be looking at for would be a place of major importance in advancing understanding of the world around us. A good example of that is Jodrell Bank. It’s clearly very important.”

Tim O’Brien, an astrophysicist at Jodrell Bank, said: “We are flattered to be considered in such a way. I would agree such sites are an important part of our cultural heritage and I think we would certainly be worthy of such a designation.”

The British sites

Cultural Ironbridge Gorge; Stonehenge, Avebury & associated sites; Durham Castle & Cathedral; Studley Royal Park including the ruins of Fountains Abbey; castles & town walls of King Edward in Gwynedd; Blenheim Palace; City of Bath; Hadrian’s Wall; Westminster Palace, Westminster Abbey & St Margaret’s Church; Tower of London; Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey & St Martin’s Church; Old and New Towns of Edinburgh; Maritime Greenwich; Heart of Neolithic Orkney; Blaenavon industrial landscape; Derwent Valley mills; Saltaire; New Lanark; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City; Cornwall and West Devon mining landscape

Natural Giant’s Causeway; St Kilda; Henderson Island; Gough and Inaccessible Islands; Dorset and East Devon Coast

The 27th British site is The historic town of St George & related fortifications, Bermuda

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