Elanor Margaret Burbridge was born August 12, 1919 in Davenport. Her father was a chemistry lecturer at Manchester School of Technology, and her mother was a student there (one of only two woman chemistry students.) She was the oldest in her family, and has a younger sister. Her mother taught her to read very early on in order to empower her to do something other than be a housewife. Margaret’s favorite book when she was younger was Treasure Island. She was also very interested in numbers from an early age, and enjoyed memorizing multiplication tables. She was quite a shy child, with school being a bit of a torment at first. She attended a private school called Heysham; she was already much more advanced in reading than the other children there. She was forced into a dance class, and as consolation her mother let her ask one math question afterwards. She enjoyed pondering the largeness of numbers. She did not get to see many stars whilst living in London, but the first time she did while on a boat was marvelous for her and impacted her greatly. Her industrial chemist father died when she was seventeen. Her father’s patents provided money for the family. She went to a private girls’ high school, where she learned elementary physics and chemistry, then botany in great detail. She was still fascinated with the geometry of the stars from her independent reading, and also with Latin. Her mother wanted her to remain at home, so she attended University College after graduation from prep school in 1936, taking pure and applied mathematics, physics, and chemistry. She began a relationship with an older geology student and did not work as hard in her studies as before until a teacher intervened, and she went back to her hard work. Her sophomore year she chose to major in astronomy with a minor in applied mathematics. She was also interested in quantum theory at the time. As a graduate student she worked at the University of London Observatory. There was no spectroscopy at University College, so she travelled to Imperial College to learn it. After working with Comrie for a short time, she went to get her PHD at University College on a paid studentship; she received her PHD in 1943. During World War II she did individual work to help the war effort, but her spectroscopy work ceased temporarily. In 1945 she was turned down for a Carnegie Fellowship, as it was reserved for men only. She remained at the University of London until 1951. After, she received a grant and moved to the United States to work in the Yerkes Observatory. In 1953 she returned to England and worked with her husband Geoffrey Burbridge on B2FH theory, which analyzed in depth the synthesis of elements in nature, relative abundance of elements, and stellar nucleosynthesis. She finally gained entrance to the Mount Wilson observatory by posing as her husband’s assistant, a ruse that was eventually found out. They decided to let her stay, as long as her and her husband moved to a cottage off-grounds instead of staying in the men’s dorm’s. In 1962 she began working in the University of California, San Diego. Burbridge is an advocate of equality in astronomy, and against discrimination for or against women; she turned down the Annie Jump Cannon award to stand up for her ideology. She continues to be a physics professor at the University of California San Diego today , and is currently researching intrinsic red shift.
