Margaret Burbidge (nee Eleanor Margaret Peachey) (born August 12, 1919) is an British 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, and the California Institute of Technology, and helped develop instruments for the Hubble Space Telescope.

She also did research in collaboration with her husband Geoffrey Burbidge (a theoretical physicist), Fred Hoyle, and William Alfred Fowler, showing the famous result that all of the elements except the very lightest are produced by nuclear processes inside stars.

Among the prizes she has won are: with her husband, the Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy in 1959; the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship in 1964.

In 1983 she was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 1985 she was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Reagan to acknowledge her scientific accomplishments.

The asteroid 5490 Burbidge is named after her.

External links

• Biography from the George Mason University (http://www.physics.gmu.edu/classinfo/astr103/CourseNotes/ECText/Bios/burbidge.htm)
• Biography from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/BurbidgeM/)