Margaret Burbidge
| Margaret Burbidge | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Eleanor Margaret Peachey August 12, 1919 Davenport, England |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Astrophysics |
| Known for | Astrophysics, Fellow of the Royal Society |
| Notable awards |
Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy (1959) National Medal of Science (1983) Albert Einstein World Award of Science (1988) |
| Spouse | Geoffrey Burbidge |
Eleanor Margaret Burbidge (née Peachey), FRS (born August 12, 1919 in Davenport) is a British-born American astrophysicist, noted for original research and holding many administrative posts, including Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
During her career, she served at the University of London Observatory, Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago, Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, the California Institute of Technology, and, from 1979 to 1988, was first director of the Center for Astronomy and Space Sciences at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she has worked since 1962.
Burbidge started studying astronomy in 1936, at University College, London, was graduated in 1939, and received her Ph.D. at University College in 1943. She was turned down for a Carnegie Fellowship in 1945 because the fellowship would have meant that she would have had to observe at Mount Wilson observatory, which was reserved only for men at that time.
In 1950, she applied for a grant at the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, and went to the United States in 1951. Her research interests focused on chemical abundances in stars. She returned to England in 1953 and started research in collaboration with her husband Geoffrey Burbidge, William Alfred Fowler, and Fred Hoyle. Based on experimentation and observational data initiated by Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, the team produced a hypothesis that all chemical elements might be synthesized in stars by nuclear reaction (known now as stellar nucleosynthesis). The resulting astrophysical theory, which was published in 1957, was called the B2FH theory after the participants who collaborated in the research (Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler, Hoyle). This theory has been the basis for a substantial field of research in astrophysics.
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