Eleanor Margaret Peachey was born August 12, 1919, in London, England. Her parents, Stanley and Marjorie Peachey, both had degrees in chemistry. Margaret loved the stars and the idea of studying astronomy from an early age. She received a BS in Astronomy in 1939 from the University of London, where she also completed her doctoral (1943) and postdoctoral (1948) studies in Physics.
The frequent blackouts of World War II London eliminated the city glare and showed Margaret that more optimal conditions improved the view of the heavens through a telescope, except, of course, when the bombing knocked the telescope out of alignment. In 1947, she applied for a Carnegie Fellowship, hoping to use the telescopes on Mt. Wilson in southern California, knowing that the clean air and higher altitude would provide greater clarity of the images. The reply she received said, women are not accepted.
In 1948, she married Geoffrey Burbidge, also a physicist. They worked at the University of London Observatory until 1951, when they moved to the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago, located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.
In 1953, they returned to England to work at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Nepotism rules prevented Marjorie for getting a position, so she became a volunteer research associate.
In 1955, Geoffrey was awarded a Carnegie Fellowship. Marjorie followed him to California and accepted a job as a research associate at the California Institute of Technology. Her husband could get access to the Mt. Wilson telescope, where women were not allowed. He told people that Marjorie was his assistant, and she finally could use the advanced equipment on Mt. Wilson. The dormitory did not allow women, so the Burbidges rented a cottage which had no hot water and used a wood burning stove for heat and cooking. It was at this time they met Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer, and William A Fowler, an American nuclear physicist. The four began a collaboration on the study of the creation of chemical elements in stars. Their work, published in 1957, showed that elements such as carbon, oxygen, and iron, are built up from hydrogen and helium by the nuclear reaction taking place within the center of stars. The B2FH (pronounced b-squared, f, h) findings indicated that all chemical elements may originate in stars. This research is still recognized as a classic in scientific study.
In 1962, Geoffrey took a position at the University of California at San Diego in the Physics Department. Margaret took a position in the Chemistry Department (Nepotism rules prevented them from being in the same department.) as an associate research physicist. In 1964, the University reversed its position
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