Margaret Burbidge

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Lore & Background

Margaret Burbidge was born in Davenport, Stockport, UK. As a child, she deduced her birth had been exactly nine months after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, concluding she was probably conceived when the armistice was announced. She first became interested in astronomy aged 3 or 4, after seeing the stars on a ferry trip across the English Channel. By age 12, she was reading astronomy textbooks by James Jeans, a distant relative of her mother. She studied at University College London (UCL), receiving an undergraduate degree in 1939 and a PhD in 1943. During the Second World War, she acted as a caretaker at University of London Observatory (ULO), with observations benefitting from unusually dark night skies caused by the wartime blackout. In August 1944, her observations were twice interrupted by V-1 flying bomb explosions nearby. She was turned down for a postdoctoral fellowship from Carnegie Observatories in 1945 because the job required observing at Mount Wilson Observatory, which was reserved for men only. From 1948-51, she taught astronomy at ULO to undergraduate students including Arthur C. Clarke. In 1951 she took a position at Yerkes Observatory, her first job in the United States. In 1953, she and her husband Geoffrey Burbidge were invited to work with William Alfred Fowler and Fred Hoyle at the University of Cambridge. The team published their model in a series of papers, culminating in the 1957 B2FH paper, with Margaret as first author, written while she was pregnant. The paper demonstrated that most heavier chemical elements were formed in stellar evolution. Fowler later received the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work and expressed surprise that Burbidge was not included. When Fowler moved back to the U.S., he advised the Burbidges to come with him. Margaret's application to Mount Wilson was again refused on gender grounds, so the couple swapped applications. Geoff won the Mount Wilson position while Margaret took a Caltech job in 1955. Whenever Geoff was required to observe, Margaret would accompany him, ostensibly as his assistant; in reality, Geoff worked in the dark room while Margaret operated the telescope. When management found out, they agreed she could observe there only if the couple stayed in a separate self-catered cottage rather than the men-only dormitory. She joined UCSD in 1962. In the 1960s and 1970s she measured masses, compositions, and rotation curves of galaxies and performed early spectroscopic studies of quasars. Her discoveries included QSO B1442+101 at a redshift of 3.5, making it the most distant known object at the time, a record she held from 1974 to 1982. She was a supporter of the steady state theory, but her own work on quasars helped support the alternative Big Bang theory. At UCSD she helped develop the Faint Object Spectrograph for the Hubble Space Telescope, which launched in 1990. With this instrument, she and her team discovered that Messier 82 contains a supermassive black hole at its center. As professor emerita she continued active research until the early 21st century, authoring over 370 research papers.

Reader's Guide

Margaret Burbidge's significance lies in her foundational role in stellar nucleosynthesis, which remains the fundamental basis for understanding how chemical elements form in stars. Her work on galaxy rotation curves and quasars advanced knowledge of galactic structure and cosmology, even as she personally supported the steady state theory. She broke gender barriers in astronomy, becoming the first female president of the American Astronomical Society (1976-1978) and director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory (1973-1975), while consistently opposing both discrimination and positive discrimination. In 1972 she turned down the Annie J. Cannon Award because it was awarded to women only, writing: 'It is high time that discrimination in favor of, as well as against, women in professional life be removed.' Her letter caused the AAS to set up its first committee on the status of women in astronomy. As AAS president in 1978, she convinced the council by six votes to five to ban meetings in states that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, a controversial move that led to resignations including Carl Heiles. The ban was dropped in 1984 after the ERA failed to become law. She served as the first director of UCSD's Center for Astrophysics and Space Science from 1979 to 1988. Her legacy includes not only scientific breakthroughs but also institutional changes that addressed gender equity in astronomy.

Did You Know?

• As a child, Margaret deduced her birth was exactly nine months after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, concluding she was probably conceived when the armistice was announced.
• During the Second World War, her observations at the University of London Observatory were twice interrupted by V-1 flying bomb explosions in August 1944.
• She was first author of the B2FH paper, which was written while she was pregnant.
• When denied a Mount Wilson fellowship on gender grounds, she and her husband swapped applications; she operated the telescope while posing as his assistant.
• She discovered QSO B1442+101 at a redshift of 3.5, the most distant known object from 1974 to 1982.