Margaret Burbidge

Margaret Burbidge was a British born American observational astronomer and astrophysicist who was first author of the influential 1957 paper, known from its authors initials as B2FH, that established most heavier chemical elements in the universe are formed inside stars through stellar nucleosynthesis. She wrote the paper together with her husband Geoffrey Burbidge, William Alfred Fowler and Fred Hoyle. Burbidge served as director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory from 1973 to 1975, becoming the first woman to hold that post, was the first female president of the American Astronomical Society from 1976 to 1978, and later served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1983. She worked at the University of California, San Diego from 1962 until her retirement, becoming the first director of its Center for Astronomy and Space Sciences in 1979, and in the 1970s and early 1980s her group discovered a quasar that was for a time the most distant known object in the universe. Over her career she authored more than 370 research papers and was an outspoken advocate against discrimination facing women in astronomy.